The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1891-03-27
MAGNITUDE OF THE UNIVERSE.
Surprising Facts Regarding the Velocity
of Light and the Distance of Stars.

Surprising Facts Regarding the Velocity
of Light and the Distance of Stars.
On clear night the average eye will
readily see stars as low as the sixth
magnitude. Such a shining beauty as
Sirius winks at you so archly that it
seems almost impossible that years are
consumed in the passage of its rays to
the earth when we remember that light
travels more than 100000 miles in a
second.
But even star so far away as that
seems nearly within touching distance
when we find that other stars, visible
with the telescope, are so far away that,
for all we may know, they may have
been blotted out before Cain and Abel
were born. That is to say, if one of
those far distant orbs had teen utterly
annihilated, as you would snuff out
candle, when Adam and Eve were en-
joying themselves in the Garden of
Eden, the rays then starting toward the
earth, notwithstanding the speed of
light, could not get here in time to
meet the closing of the nineteenth CEN
fury.
How do we know that light travels at
such wonderful speed? Up to about 225
years ago it was supposed that rays of
light from all the celestial orbs passed
instantly to the observers eye. The old
astronomers, in fact, never took thought
Of the matter at all. They simply saw
the sun and the stars, but they never
dreamed that the rays from them had
to journey millions, billions and tril-
lions of miles in getting to mundane
eyes. 1t was the great fortune of a
Danish astronomer to make the dis
covery that light, as well as sound or
railway train requires given time to
travel a given distance.
Roemer, the famous Dane alluded to,
was led to his discovery by observations
of the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. He
found that there was a difference of
several minutes in these eclipses, that
they occurred earlier when the earth
was on the side of the sun nearest to
Jupiter, and later when farthest away.
With this data as a starting point, he
soon found that the difference of APP
parent time resulted from the time re-
iulICu LUZ llSuG " ITdVel ACROSS JIle
diameter of the earth's orbit, about one
hundred and eighty-two million miles.
The time proved to be about sixteen
minutes, and as half that would be the
time from the earth to the sun, the mys-
terry was solved.
The accuracy of this calculation has
since been verified by other methods,
and all authorities now agree that the
velocity of light is not far from 1SG. 600
miles second. 1t is difficult for the
mind to grasp and comprehend such
speed. The swiftest animate thing is
undoubtedly the pigeon, which has been
known to travel hundreds of miles at
the rate of fifty miles an hour. A little
arithmetical exercise will show that it
would take a pigeon more than two
hundred years to cover the distance to
the sun at fifty miles an hour without a
stop, and to go as far as Neptune it
would take the bird nearly one thou
sand years.
When we want an illustration of speed
we often use the expression ''swift as
cannon ball" But, if you could fire a
cannon ball to the sun when you are a
college freshmen, your hair would be
sprinkled with gray when the ball
stopped, for you would be seventeen
years older than when you fired the
shot Times