The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-08-24

very ground would smoke, and before we
the sun the whole globe would have been
melted, if not dissipated in vapor.
"Arcturus is truly king among the stars,
and our sun, great and brilliant as it is, if
dropped into the blazing atmosphere of
Arcturus would be instantly swallowed up
would be Il sudden flash, and then. perhaps.
a quickly. vanishing blot on the brilliant
surface of the great star, when the down
rush Of the doomed sun had swept in a
breath Of cooler vapor from above.
But it is worth while stopping a mo-
attraction of such a body as Arcturus. On
the sun the force of gravity is
twenty-seven times as great as on the
surface of the earth, but on Arcturus, sup
posing the same mean destiny, would
it be 1900 times as great, SO that a man
weighing 2OO pounds transported to Arctu-
rus would be crushed under his own weight
of 100000 pounds into a fiat speck of proto-
plasmlc nOnentlty almost before the fierce
fires OF that mighty solar furnace could lick
him up and transform him into a sun
BEAM"
"What sort of people would be fonna
walking around Arcturus? Rather large,
aren't they?''
VT we suppose that Arcturus could be an
inhabited world, it is natural to speculate
on the tremendous size of its inhabitants"
"Voltaire, in his 'Mioromegas,' tells a
story OF an inhabitant of a planet belong
ing to Sirius, or the Dog Star, who was 80
large that when he visited the earth he was
able to wade through it's oceans without
wettlnR his ankles, but the ~stronomers
have shown that the probability as to the
size of the inhabitants of these great orbs
Is Just the other way, that because they are
large their Rravitatlon must be SO great that
their inhabitants, instead of being proper
tlonately large, would be exceedingly
small.
IF, however. we suppose that the size of
an lnhabltant of Arcturus should correa-
pond with that of the globe upon which he
dwells. he would be upward of ten miles
tail, ana II he were. on the other hand,
small i'll proportion to the size Of the globe.
and the general opinion of astronomers is
that he would be small rather than large,
he wonld be only eight one-thoussndths of
an inch tall.
But. unless we are to agree with Her
schel, who thought that even the sun might
nave living inhabitants under the crust of
blazing clouds by which it is surrounded,
we must assume that it would not be possi
BILE for any living being to dwell upon the
star Arcturua.'
Doesn't Arcturus have a great manv
planets to which ours is a very small af-
fair?'
."Arcturus may have a great family of
plahets proportloned IN size to the treInen-
dous SIZE OF the star itself. If that pigan-
tic star has it's planets on the same propor-
tionate scale as our solar system, then a
planet belonging to Arcturns and CORE
spending IN comparative size and place to
the earth would be 65G, 600 miles in diane
ter and 2,OO0.O 600 miles around, or half as
large as the sun itself, but its distance from
Afcturus would be enormous IA compared
with the distance of the earth from the
sun.
"A planet co responding to Jupiter would
be more than 100000 miles IN diameter,
ana over 22,O0,WJ III circumference. Think
now very small Its Inhabitants would have
TO De III order to stand up under the face of
Its gravitation."
But we would rather think of the na-
yves or Arcturus' planets as being very
large WY
We'll, although all the scientific proba-
plilties are IN favor of their being small in
proportion as their worlds are large, vet it
IN impossible for US to say that nature NAV
not have provided in such cases for the ex-
lstence of a people proportional for the
SIZE or the globes on which they dwell.
Little microscopic creatures a few hun
oreoths OF nm inch in height would scarcely
De suited to the conquest and DEVELOPMENT
OF mighty worlds as large Rs or larger than
our sun itself, that's Is fact.
let US suppose then, as being more ac-
cirdant with our own ideas of the fitness of
tnlngs. that the inhabitants of these bio
ptahsts Dear some proportion to the globes
which are their homes.
1t does not follow that they should walk
upon two legs and move about perpendicu-
larly as the inhabitants of the world do
nature could readily provide for the intro