Untitled

Southland Times, Issue 1007, 21 August 1868, Page 3

What can you not name without breaking it? Silence. Light travels 192,000 miles a second. Bed Ught haß 39,990 waves to an inch. Hence, 474,---439,680,000,000 of the waves of a single ray strike the eye each second. Many millions of rays are bombarding it at the same time, and yet the retina receives, dissects, and comprehends them all. At the above given velocity of light, it takes ten years for it to reach us from 61 cygni, the nearest fixed sjtar. The suns composing the milky way are 12,000 times more distant ; hence their light is 120,000 years in its flight to- us. Some of the nebula are 500 times more remote than the milky way and consequently their light must be 60,000,000 years on its journey to us. As the light ofthe nebula does reach us, it follows that those stars existed where they now appear sixty million years ago. If a young lady has a thousand acres of valubie land, the young men apt to conclude that there are sufficient grounds for attachment.