OUR NEAREST SKY NEIGHBOURS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 December 1929, Page 6

OUR NEAREST SKY NEIGHBOURS

H 3133 AND At 83. THE UNIVERSE AROUND US. (By SIR JAAIES JEANS.) Not everyone will agree with Sir James Jeans that the effect of the astonishing advances of astronomy, since the first telecope was made in 1608, has been to make man “realise bis own insignificance in tlie universe.” No one, indeed, can fail to be awed by the knowledge that the firm earth (Vn which we stand is but a particle whirling round a minor star itself but one of millions of incredible mi ght and majesty, and yet that even these are so scattered in space that “six specks of dust in Waterloo Station about represent the extent to which it is occupied by stars in..its most crowded parts.” But, quite apart from the philosophic reflection that the mind that is capable of comprebending these marvels, by that act proves itself a greater marvel still, there is much in Sir James’s account of tlie universe that tends to reinstate man at its spiritual, if not its material, centre. Stupendous as the universe is, Sir James sec I ,ms to bring it within calculable, if not comprehensible, bounds:

AYe can calculate that the radius of the universe must be .something like 80.000,000 light-years, or little more than half the distance of the farthest visible nebula. The, journey of light round space and back to the starting point' would take about 500.000.000 years, so that if we could see even three or four times as far into space as we now see the nebulae nearest to the sun ought to be visible by light which had travelled the long way round the universe. These are not the mere irresponsible reveries of a heated imagination. It has been, quite seriously suggested that two faint nebulae (h 3433 and AIS3) may actually be our two nearest neighbours in the sky, A 133 and M3l, seen the long way round space.

The universe, thus limited in space, is limited also in time, for it is all dissolving away into radiation, running down like a clock. But on the supreme question how it was first wound up, astronomy has nothing to

say. ' “If we wn.nt a concrete picture of .. . . creation,” says Sir James, “we may think of the finger of God agitating the ether.”