HOW STARS ARE BORN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 454, 6 April 1912, Page 7

HOW STARS ARE BORN.

THE MYSTERIOUS CURTAIN OP THE NIGHT. Fontanelle somewhere tells a story of a family of roses of which each one only lived one day, and, as none of them, during this short space of time, had seen "any change in the face of the gardener, the idea was transmitted one to the other that he was immortal. In regard to the aspect of the sky, Professor Charles Nordman complains, in a charming address, that men have been like the roses. As the aspect of the sky has not changed during the few short centuries of their history, they believe, childlike, that the stars and constellations were the symbols of immutability, and for that reason called them "lined" stars.

To-day we know, however, that the stars and our sun, which is one oi the smallest of them, are, as everything else, subject to change ; that they" are born, live and die in obedience to the laws of their evolution. Though the entire duration of thinking humanity is only as a flash oi lightning in the life of the stars, the sky itself at the same time lets us see all the successive phases, and. in this immense garden, whose flowers are the brilliant and twinkling stars, we are like the naturalist who, walking through a forest, looks at the oak trees of various ages and from these observations form an idea ol their whole life.

We know now that the oases of light which the telescope discovers in the deserts of space, and which are called "nebulae," are the grand moulds in which future suns are born. Only a short time ago there were very serious men who insisted that the nebulae were holes in the arch of the sky through which we were allowed to see glimpses of the light of heaven. But they were deceived by appearances, as very often happens in this world, whether you use telescopes or not, and this opinion was erroneous.

Here as everewhere in astronomy, reality far surpasses imagination, and is a thousand times more wonderful. It has been proved that the nebulae are accomulators of phosphorescent gases, the extent and rarification of which is beyond all conception. The beautiful nebula in the constellation of Orion, whose fantastic shape reminds one of a flying eagle, occupies a space in the sky which is 320 million times larger than the earth's orbit around the

Strangely enough, the spectroscope shows in the nebulae the presence of only three kinds of gases—"nebuliiim," unknown in our sphere ; hydrogen and helium. On this fact many ingenious and uncertain theories have been built up. The simplest is that at the extremely low temperature near the absolute zerc (minus 273 degrees Centigrade) which prevails in the heavens, only the matters that are most difficult to liquefy, hydrogen and helium, are able to exist in gaseous form.

As to the origin of the light of the nebulae, Professor Nordroan is inclined to attribute it to the Hertzian waves that iradiate from the stars. The gases of the nebulae because of the mutual attraction of their atoms little by little condense towards the centre, and it is the motion due to this condensation that automatically produces the enormous heat we find in the stars.

The total heat produced by the nebulae from which our sun has been bcrn, from the distant time when it extended to the orbit of Neptune, hps been calculated to be enough to maintain the present formidable heat of the sim for 18,000,000 years. When the density of the star formed has become too great for the condensation to go on effectively, its temperafcure slowly sinks until the day when it ceases to send out light, and the star floats around in space, invisible and frozen, while other nebulae continue to give birth to new suns. It is not only the immense heat of the stars but also their movements that the nebulae hold in reserve within tbeir dark fogs, and it has been possible to calculate exactly that the nebulae of Orion rushes through, space with a velocity of more than 61,000 kilometers (nearly 10,000 miles) an hour. And still this nebulae, the most beautiful in the sky, is so far from us that it sends us no more light than would an ordinary candle at a distance of seven kilometers (about five miles). This means that it is visible in the telescope only during very dark nights, and that the pale rays of the moon, not to speak of the bright (daylight, hide it completely from bur observation.

Midnight is not only the chosen hour of pLoitters and conspirators, but. also that of vast flights towards iistant mountains. During the day we see only one sun ; during the night we see millions. And if the dazzling curtaiin, which light draws in front of thie sky, is woven from brilliant rays, it is a curtain nevertheless, for it, makes us resemble the moths whom a too vivid light prevents from, seeing farther than the tips of their wings.—'"Popular Science Sift^ffiLgs."