The Genesis of the Elements

The hypothesis is suggested that a great part of the matter in the universe is composed chiefly of iron and nickel, like the metallic meteors, and that such material, which is thermodynamically stable with respect to all spontaneous transmutations, except at extremely high temperatures, is superficially attacked by cosmic radiation to produce the material represented by the earth's crust and by the stony meteors. As a test of this hypothesis of the genesis of stony meteors from metallic meteors, a comparison is made of the relative abundance of the chief atomic species in the two types of meteors. The striking results of this comparison strongly indicate a genetic relationship. Three main disintegration processes to which the iron and nickel nuclei are subjected seem to be the splitting off of oxygen from these nuclei; the splitting of the nuclei into two identical parts; and the splitting of helium from the products of the preceding process.