Life in the Milky Way?

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The cry of the children

t is estimated that, all in all, our Milky Way
consists of more than 150,000 million stars
of all types, and at least several thousand mil-
lions of them might have planetary systems.

To judge the number of inhabited worlds we
must take into account that special, favourable,
conditions must precede the emergence and dey-
elopment of life.

The temperature and gravity on the surface
of a planet must be comfined within certain, fairly
narrow limits.

At too low or too high temperature, protein,
the basis of life, disintegrates.

Life requires an atmosphere, and not only
because we breathe oxygen. Without an atmos-
phere liquids boil at low temperatures and solu-
tions in which protein compounds originate
cannot exist.

Furthermore, in the absence of an atmosphere,
temperature fluctuations are extreme; the sunny
side of an object may be scorching hot while the
shady side may be as cold as minus 100 to 200

- degrees Centigrade.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow x Ҥ ;

Why their tears are falling so?
’The old man may weep for his tomorrow
Which is lost in Long Ago::
The old tree is leafless in the forest,

Over one hundred years ago English poet Elizabeth Barrett
Browning wrote a wrathful threnody, “The Cry of the Children”. She
had intended it as a protest against the conditions of the children who,
worked in the mills of 19th century England, tell

The lines have such timeless impact, however, that the U.S.
Worker recently offered them as a tribute to the murdered children of
Birmingham, Alabama.

Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—

And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;

The young flowers are blooming toward the West—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly! Se
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

On small planets, like Mercury, life is im-
possible because the slight gravity pull is in-
capable of keeping an atmosphere,

Of the nine planets of the solar system, prob-
ably only two have conditions favourable for life,
our earth and Mars.

Since it takes billions of years for the develop-
ment of highly organized life, we can expect it to
exist only on planets revolving about suffici-
ently old stars—

This menas that within a radius of 100 light

The old year is ending in the frost,
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of the angels in their places,

With eyes turned on diety.

‘How long,’’ they say, ‘‘how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart—
Stifle down with mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper

And your purple shows your path!

CHILDREN FEAR WAR

me coreat study, of a U.S. re-

‘search psychologist Sibylle
K. Escalona and a group of col-
leagués called the ‘Committee

Of Children’’ has revealed that’

the average American child suf-
fers deeply from war fears and
Teveals deep concern and often
“deep pessimism over “ne issue
Of war and peace.

Three hundred and eleven New
York children between the ages
Of 11 and 17 were asked such
Questions as; ‘‘Think about the
World as it may be about ten
years from now. What are some
of the ways in which it may be
different from today ... How
Would you like it to be differ-
NLD Rm cg 04

* *
Seventy percent of the children
Tesponded by revealing their
fears of war and destruction and

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.”’

a hopelessness before the nuclear
bomb.

Said one 12-year-old: ‘‘We
may have gone to the moon. We
would maybe have a new way of
transportation. Maybe we will
not even be here 10 years from
now. Maybe there will be no such
thing as the world. Maybe there
will be a third world war, We
don’t know.”’

These statements came from
two 1l-year-olds: ‘*In ten years
countries will still be quarrel-
ing — larger countries will be
preparing bombs to wipe out the
world,’ and — ‘‘the people will
be living underground and they

would have to have a lot of.

light or I think the children
will not be very strong as they
are now. But I really hope it
will be a lot better than I think
it will be.”

YUGOSLAVS TOUR CANADA

A world famous group of folk

Singers and dancers from
Yugoslavia has arrived in Canada
for an extended tour of our count-
Ty. The tour, sponsored by G.
Goodman, began in Montreal on

WORTH
READING

Socialism in Britain, by A. L.
Morton. Price $1.00 (Paperback).

Morton enjoys a high reputa-
tion as an historian who knows

how to make past events illu- -

Minate the problems of the pre-
Sent. This new work represents a
Summary and a continuation of

is past books, and throws new

light on today’s issues by show-
ing how much ground has al-
Teady been traversed.

It shows that revolutionary so-
Cialism is not, as so often mis-
Tepresented, a foreign importa-
ion into Britain.

September 20 and will conclude
with a performance in the Queen
Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver
on Friday, November l.

Featured among the many
songs and dances will be several
samples of the culture of Mace-
donia, whose capital city—Skopje
—was recently levelled by aser-
ies of tragic earthquakes. All
proceeds from the tour are ear-
marked to aid the victims of the
earthquakes. :

Those talented Yugoslav per-
formers, here on the North A-
merica continent for the first
time, have appeared in 42 coun-

tries where they have won many _

first and secord prizes.

Recently, they appeared before
an enthusiastic audience of 8,000
in France and were awarded
first prize at the Royal Albert
Hall Festival in England for their
outstanding performances.

The Vancouver show will be
their lone performance in B.C.

Tickets are available at the

QE Theatre.

years there may be five to ten such outstanding
planets.

This number is correspondingly less if the av-
erage life span of a civilization is shorter.

Might cosmonauts from other worlds have al-
ready visited the Earth?

Let us approach this question from a different
angle:

Think of the time when mankind will be dis-
patching stellar ships to worlds 100 light years
away.

Within 100 light years from the Earth there
are about 10,000 stars with some 100,000 plan-
ets circling about them.

It would be too expensive and hardly practic-
able an undertaking to attempt to visit all of them.

* oF *

But even if we were to visit 1,000 planets
this would be only 1 per cent of the total.

That is why, even if there exists a highly de-
veloped civilization somewhere near the solar
system, the chances of scouts from it giving
preference to our earth are negligible.

The probability that at some period in the mil-
lions millennia of the Earth’s history it was
visited by space travellers is fairly great.

But this probability dwindles as we drop from
thousands of millions to thousands of years.

Small probability, naturally, does not exclude
the possibility of such an event.

So, far, however, no evidence has been found

The wide range of temperatures under which terrestrial
life is possible:
1—bacterial spores; 2—rotifers; 3—seeds of higher
plants; 4—blue-green algae; 5—flower plants; 6—insects;
7—land mammals; 8—fish; 9—birds; 10—mosses and
lichens; 11—round worms and tardigrada

on Earth which would point with any degree of
certainty to extraterrestial visitors having ever
been here.

Is it possible to get into contact with neigh-
boring civilizations?

Yes, of course, say, with the help of electro-
magnetic waves.

~ * *

The U.S. National Radio-Astronomical Ob-
servatory began, in 1960, a search for signals
which might have been beamed toward the solar
system by intelligent denizens of another world.

A radio telescope with a parobolic antenna 25.5
metres across was directed toward two stars
very like the Sun — one in the constellation
Cetua, the other in the constellation Eridanus,
both some 11 light years away.

It takes as long for a radio signal to reach
us, so even if it is picked up and people engage
in a ‘‘conversation’’ with another world it will
certainly drag out for scores and hundreds of
years.

—V. Davydov (Soviet scientist)

Doing ‘The Homework Twist’

=ducational psychologists’ who
oan examined America’s
homework habits have decided
that many students are more in-
terested in yoga than good grades.

One parent came home to find
her teenage daughter sprawled
on the living room floor, head
twisted at a crazy angle, one leg
bent underneath the other. Her
eyes were closed and the phone-
graph needle plinked monoton-
ously in the last groove of a re-
cord,

It looked like murder but mo-

by as much as 15 points once
given a quiet, comfortable study
area, decent lighting, and proper
learning tools.

Yet even the best intentional
student often finds himself twist-
ing for a comfortable reading
position.

* * *

A good part of the problem, as
reading authority Dr. Clarence
Truman Gray sees it, lies in the
angle formed by the student’s”
line of vision and his book.

Dr. Gray’s studies indicates

ther knew better. Her teen-queen
was only trying to do her home-
work. :

Judging from this young lady's
contortions psychologists would
say she was trying NOT todoher
homework. They say that anyone
who sets up distractions while
supposedly concentration on
studies is consciously, or un-
consicously, attempting to get
out of doing them.

They reason‘ that unnatural
body positions cause nervous ten-
sion, eyestrain and fatigue. Fa-
tigue induces sleep. What bet-
ter way of escaping your home-
work? ;

One educator has dubbed these
weird study positions the ‘‘ Home-
work twist.’”’

If a rock ‘n’ roll song writer
took a crack at the phenomenon,

it might come out like this:
Turn on the record player
and loud, é

Get on the telephone and in-
vite the crowd—

Ball up in an easy chair
and dim the light

Concentrate on algebra with
all our might.

The real reason behind the
‘Homework Twist’? is something
far more serious than most par-
ents realize. The ‘‘Homework
Twist”? is created by the students
attempting to find a comfortable
position in which they can both
read and write. :

Almost all education authori-
ties Say study must be systema-
tic to be effective. Tests have
shown that normally bright stu-
dents who hit the academic skids

-have perked up their averages

that the ideal position for reading
would be to hold the book at a-
bout a 70 degree angle to the
line of sight.

**Allowing for a comfortable
position, good posture, and good
vision, we should do close work
at an angle of not less then 45
degrees, the ideal position being
about 70 degrees. Since our‘
arms tire and we are unable to
hold a book steadily—a simple
mechanical means is neces-
sary.”’

Studies show that the majority
of students attempt to read at
angles from 45 degrees to as
little as 20 degrees. Flat-angle
reading puts unnecessary strain
on eye muscles, causing useless
expenditure of energy and usual-
ly ruining good posture habits.

—From the RWSDU Record

October 11, 1963—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5