IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE?

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 643, 14 February 1914, Page 7

IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE?

A COMMON-SENSE VIEW. Ka'it, that grumbling g'-'ni i'\ \ho found it ho ribly monotonous to see the tarn? s\n shining ever/ year and Spring always returning at the sane time. lo;t himself in metaphysical speculations trying to prove that the inl.nicc sc.ace is everywhere filled with similar stars.

It is. said Professor Charles Nordmann, in a recent paper, perhaps prudtnt to examine this problem i-nly in the light of recent reliable observations, carefully leaving oit all confusing metaphysical thoughts v. huh may force us to define what v.c call space and end by making us crnf>-.s that we know nothing, not even that it actually exists. Using, fh ivfore, only common sense, we \\ 'ill bsgi'n by admitting that an ini'nite space really exists. Is the number of stars un'imited 1 '; litc are those, the Professor points out, v.he deny this a priori, reasonin : in this manner : No matter vh \t the number of stars is, it may always be added to. It is, therefore, not 'lnfinite, since nothing may be added to the infinite. The argument is p!a'.:. c iible, , but it is false, though Voltaire was taken in by it. One docs not need to be a doctor of mathematics to know that one may al.'. a:s add to an infinite number, anl that there exist infinite numbers that are infinitely small comrarcd to others. If the world of stars were endless, there would not be a single line of sight from the earth which would not meet one of the stars. The astronomer, Olbers, has remarked that the mighty sky would then be of a brilliancy comparable to that of the si n. Now the total brilliancy of all tho stars taken together is barely three thousand times greater than that of a star of the first magnitude : that is to say, thirty million times less than that of the sun. Because of this 'it was once thought that it could be proved that the number of stars was Limited. But one forgot to remember that Olber's argument proves nothing for two reasons, which Professor Nordmann gives. First, there are necessarily in the sky many extinct and obscure stars ; we know a number of them v.hich have bc.n carefully studied and which piove their existence by eclipsing sr.iica in many places is lilled with dark nebulous masses and clouds of a cosmic dust which absorb the light of more distant stars. It is easily seen, therefore, that an (infinite number of brilliant stars is perfectly compatible with the faint brightness of the nocturnal sky.

And now, in the Professor's words, if we adjust our spectacles—or rather, our telescopes—and pass from the domains of the possible to those of the real, the observations made during recent years with ' the most powerful instruments supply us with a certain number of facts which are quite .remarkable, and which irresistibly lead to the following conclusions :

The number of visible stars is by no means, as we have long used to believe, limited only by the power of our visual or photographic telescopes. As we go away from the sun the number of stars contained in the unit of volume—the "frequency of the stars"—does not remain uniform, but diminishes as we grow closer to the limits of the immense ant-hill of stars, which we call the Milky Way. Our sun seems placed in the central regions of this heap, which is rudely shaped like a watch case which seems to be about half as wide as it is long. Light, the speed of which being 300.000 kilometres a second permits 'it to run around the earth at the equator in in one-eighth of a second, takes 250 centuries to traverse this space. The number of stars in the Milky Way seems to be between five hundred millions and one milliard—a thousand millions. This is ;1 very small number, far smaller than the number of iron molecules contained in a pin-head. Outside the limits of the Milky Way space seems deserted and devoid of stars for enormous distances, compared to the extent of the Milky Way group of stars. If there are, very much further away, other universes, we cannot Inovv anything about them, for they are isolated from our optical point of view, perhaps by the phenomena of cosmic absorption.

Dare we hope, asks Professor Nordmann, that some day perfect means of observation will permit us to cross the silent abysses which surround our Milky Way Cosmos ? Or are our views perhaps prisoners forever in this giant monade ? Probably the latter is true because of the ether. "I do not speak of the ether of the druggists, which is sold in bottles and beloved by certain ladies, nor of the ether of the poets, which is so vague that no one really knows what it is. No. I speak of th 3 ether of the scientists, of that imponderable and marvellously elastic medium which fills the space between the planets, and which is more precious than the air we breathe, since it transmits the light and heat vibrations of the sun, the source and torch of all life on earth."

Now, according to the most recent discoveries of science, concludes our great authority, ether and matter seem more and more to be modified forms of one another. Nothing proves that the two forms of substance are not always associated and found together. And perhaps the Milky Way, the local concentration of matter, is nothing but a bubble of isolated ether. If this be so, if around our universe there be spaces devoid

of ether, it will be forever impossible for even the fadntest ray of

light, the smallest quantity of energy to come to us from worlds which perhaps live and breathe beyond, and these worlds shall forever be for us as if they did not exist at all.

"'There are then things we are never to know," cry the astonished simpletons. "A pleasant pretension, to want everything in existence to be contained in a few cubic inches of grey matter."—"Popular Science Sittings."