IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE

Hokitika Guardian, 19 February 1921, Page 1

IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE

ORIGIN OF ST AILS AND PLANETS

A JOURNEY OF FANTASY

I Emile' Belot, vice-president of the As-tronomical-Society of France, lias pro- [ pounded a new explanation of the origin of the stars and of the planets. In (lie highly imaginative style so characteristic of the French, he sets his readers astride a ray of light and then sets forth on a journey through the vast sea of space. “Let us quit ’ the earth leaping astride a ray of light which, travelling at a velocity of 180,01)0 miles per second has taken Sihin IBsec to come from the sun, passing on its way the planets of .Mercury and Venus. In a tvillc more thifn another second we shall reach the moon (221,500 miles distant); in Irnin 20sec more we shall tome to -Mars, hut it will take us a quarter of an hour longer to cross the zone of a thousand,little planets before reaching Jupiter in the course of Bom in Saturn in 70min, Uranus in 2hr JOmin, and Neptune in Hir. Along our path we shall meet many comets which remote from the sun, possess no tails, and, indeed, are scarcely visible, being, merely small sphericaljiebulae.

“The sun now looks to us merely like

come great star, but we shall not leave its sphere of attraction until our journey has continued for two years; for we shall not reach the nearest brilliant star. A Cantauri, until after four rears of travel, retiring which we shall have covered a distance of twentyfour thousand billion miles. Here our first surprise awaits us; the star A Centauri is a double star composed of two suns gravitating about each other. Our own single sun, situated at the e ntre of our system, is an exception.

as we shall find, for in our ultra-rapid i urncy we shall encounter not only many double suns but many that are triple, quadruple, etc.

"Hut now' we must begin to count by centuries in tlu' record of our voyage. In an extent of space measured l>y from one to three centuries we shall eticoupler the ureat amorphous nehulae, Orion, tygnus, etc., faintly glowing gaseous masses which douhtfess form part of the original raw materials employed in the formation of worlds, and which contain above all hydrogen and helium. At the end of sixty centuries of this journey of fantasy we shall have had the opportunity to oount a billion or two of stars; we shall have had a fleeting glance at millions of pin nets revolving around fixer! stars and hearing billions of ,human beings, whom we shall never have the pleasure of knowing! And yet we shall have arrived only at the edge-of the central nucleus of the .Milky Way, and not even at those star clouds which resemble in photographs a golden dust east into the infinite shadow of space. Here, perhaps, we shall see the birth of a world, of ;i planetary system like our own, , from tlie shock of a gaseous star coming

into collision with a nebula in one of those sudden conflagrations, which rereals itself to us as a ‘Nova.’ ‘‘flavine now had the patience to admire this majeetic spectacle during a journey of centuries, travelling at a velocity of IHti.OOO miles per second, the celestial horizon will at hist, appeal free from all stellar dust. What awaits us beyond? In the direction of Sagittarius we shall perceive masses ( f stars which have been railed tln* Island l tiiverses; these open or globular masses

aro ntio agglomerations, each one o' which ms*v contain from 30,000 to 100,000 suns, a sphere'of fire turning round an axis like a lighthouse illuminating the infinite ocean of ether. Let us stride across one-of these masses (that of the Delphinus) without sevenleagued boots, which would necessitate a jouruev of 2000 centuries, and which appears to he tit the extreme confines of one of the spirals of tin- wonderful Milky Way.

"Let us dive now into sidereal depths; we shall now perceive only spiral nebulae, i.e., the other milk ways—the universes external to our own, which are numbered by millions. The nearest one is the spiral nebulae of Andromeda, which rushes towards us at a velocity of ISO miles per second, and wherein the telescope has. already beheld the birth of no fewer than fifteen new stars. And how far is Andromeda from us! J Possibly at a distance, which measured in years of light, amounts to from 5000 to 0000 centuries.

“Thus we measure velocities, thus we observe cosmic shocks and record phenomena which took place at least 200,000 years ago, and probably more than 500,000 years ago! We are photographing to-dav stars which must have ceased to exist before man made his appearance upon earth. Behold the grandiose and impressive tableau of the Cosmos revealed by modern astronomy. How different this is as regards space and time from the infinitesimal sidereal horizon known to the astionoineis scarcely a century ago.”