The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1882-09-01
COMETS.
Some Facts Of Interest Concerning
IN esc Erratic Heavenly Visitors.
rFrofn thA Iondon poat

In ese Erratic Heavenly Visitors.
tFrom the London Post.l
A great comet visible to all the world
is one Of the most striking aud startling
OF celestial apparitions q new star Is in
reality much rarer and a much more
surprising object. But those who can
recognize a new star outside the circle
OF practical astronomers are few indeed.
Moreover, as new stars are but rarely of
the first magnitude and appear at inter-
walls OF centuries, no superstition, even
in the fiourishing days of astrology, has
ever attached to them. That sun once
invisible or rarely visible to terrestrial
eyes should suddenly become striking
astronomical object is the most strange
and amazing of all scientific facts to
those few who understand its meaning.
The stars. of course, are suns, and in all
probability each of them has it's own
circle Of planets. For oil we know each
OF them may have dependent upon it
worlds peopled by creatures equal to or
even superior to men, creatures whose
fate, even If wb could understand to
know it, would excite our keenest SYM
pathies. Now the change implied by
the appearance OF so-called star to the
worlds dependent upon it, and to all
their inhabitants, must be in the last de-
gree terrible. 1t is as il our sun had
suddenly to blaze out ten or hundred
times as large, and as bright and hot as
now. 1t is scarcely necessary to say
that such an occurrence would neither
be remembered nor recorded, for no life
organized under the existing conditions
of life in any one of the planets of which
the amount of solar light and heat is the
most important element could survive
such change for twenty-four hours.
Even supposing that the increase of heat
and light is much more gradual than it
seems to telescope observers on such
occasions, an addition even of one-fourth
to the total heat emitted by the sun
would probably destroy all the higher
forms Of animate nature. The total heat
received from the sun must not, of
course, be measured by the nominal
scale of the thermometer. Zero repre-
sents an amount of warmth practically
derived in its entirety from the sun,
compared with which the difference be-
tween zero and tropical sun heat is triv-
ial. 1t is supposed that if the heat of
the sun were absolutely withdrawn the
temperature of our atmosphere would
fall to more than 200 degrees below Fab
renheit, cold which, it is needless to
say, no life could endure for many hours.
Similarly, an increase of the total heat
received from the sun, though merely
in the proportion of four to three, would
produce a temperature of which no
earthly life has had any experience. 1t
would raise summer temperature of 90
degrees Fahrenheit to at least $50 de-
grees Fahrenheit. We're the suns heat
doubled tomorrow we should be ex-
posed to a heat of over 500 degrees
that is to say, heat sufficient to melt
lead and to convert all the waters on the
earth's surface into steam. The revolu-
ton implied by the appearance of a new
or the sudden brilliancy OF faint star is
infinitely greater than this, and means
nothing less than the total destruction Of
life on all the dependent worlds. Yet,
awful as are such catastrophes, they
hardly impress the imagination even Of
astronomers, and are regarded by the
public with utter indifference.