The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1871-11-17
THE FIXED STARS.
EY. 2. A. TowNE.


globe is that which is nightly offered
to our careless and almost thought
less gaze. Take any fair and moon
less night and look up into the hea
Vens. Over fifteen hundred stars
varying from the first to the sixth
magnitude, are displayed at once tC
the view. The great Milky-way
crosses the armament containing
millions of Suns, and a vast number
OF nebulOus spots are thrown in tC
give variety to the wonderful dis.
play. Hardly one of these stars j:
less than twenty trillions of miles
away from the Sun, and most o.
them are at distances at present i'm
| possible for us to measure. The Fea.
soning powers of man, aided By the
telescope, declare these stars to be
/ absolutely infinite in number and
filling infinite space. Start train Of
cars in any given direction out into
space, and, though moving at the
rate of thousand miles per hour
infinite ages would pass away
and the train be no nearer the bounda.
ries of the universe than at starting
Such thoughts as these are becoming
familiar to men, and form demonstra-
| tive evidences of the existence OF an
| intelligence which controls the whole
material universe with infinite wis
| dom. Slowly the mind of man is
rising to faint conception of the
fact that it has been so constituted as
to be capable of infinite expansion,
and yet remain infinitely inferior TO
the mind which has given birth to
the worlds that form 80 important
q part of our study.
Within the last few years the spec
troscOpe has revealed the fact that all
the stars which glitter in our sky
must have a common ply sical origin.
an origin common TO them and our
own Sun. AT least eighteen OF the
elements which make up our earth
are found in the Sun, and the spectra
of the stars and nebuln show that
these same elements are also found
in those faF-Off bodies. This fact
points TO the unmis,akable conclusion
that each of the stars is the center of
system similar to that of which our
Sun i. at present the governing pow
er. This granted, and it becomes ab-
surd TO hesitate moment in regard
TO the inhabitability of all the sys-
TENS within and beyond our very
limited vision. To suppose that no
globe except the small affair inhsb-
tied by man has Deen brought for
ward to that period of its history
which covers it with intelligent or
ganized beings would be a piece OF
egOtism quite in eonsonance with
many of our own presumptions, but
not at all in harmony with the idea
of infinite wisdom.
We have in our own planet Mars
almost demonstrative evidence OF
the existence of intelligence greatly
superior 10 our own, and it is qui,e
possible that a similar fact exists
much nearer home. Why then hesi-
tate to allow the Imagination to have
full sweep as it moves off among the
worlds outside of the reach of direct
investigation?
The star Sirius the brightest of
all the heavens, is described BY DR..
Dick as entering the field Of the
great telescope of Lord Rose with
all the dazzling brilliancy of a Sun. 1t
is estimated to be eight times larger
than our own Sun, and THEREFORE sur
rounded by system of planets hav-
ing more than five hundred times
the material importance of our
own. Why hesitate to ascribe
to its intellectual worlds an impor-
lance equally superior: Its Earth, its
Mars, its king Jupiter and ringed
Saturn, with multitudinous satellites,
are all filed with organized intelli-
gences as beautifully, as accurately
adapted TO the condition around
them as we are to the elements that
make up our little globe of q few
thousand miles in diameteri Only
few more years will pass away W hen
these imaginative speculations will
be converted to matters of fact, and
other fields not now known to exist
will in turn become theaters of hesi-
tant thought.
What is true of Sirius may with
safety be taken as equally true of
Alpha Centauri, the star nearest our
system. 1t is the grest star in the
Southern Gross, and within twenty
eight degrees of the South Pole. Al
lowing no error in calculating its
distance, it is only about ten triIiioas
of miles from us, and appears to the
eye about as our Sun would ifmoved
to like distance from the Earth.
That 1t has habitable worlds reyolv-
ing aronnd it there can be no rea-
sonable doubt. So Of Vega of LYrs,
of the great stars Of Orion, of bright
Capells, Of Regulus, and finally of
the whole myriad of stars that man
only recently thought to be holes
through piece of complicated ma
chinery invented for his special ben
fit.