The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1891-01-22
BURNT-OUT STARS.
Is There any Chance that They Will Eyer Strike
...~- Our Earth.

BURNT-OUT STARS.
Is There any Chance that They will Ever Strike
Our Earth.
Astronomers tell us that our son and
all the stars must eventually burn ont
and become dead celestial bodies.
Then we should like to know what is
to become of the remains. 1t is a
pretty we'll established fact that in
nature nothing is lost and we NAV
fairly assume that there is no uni
versal cemetery where defunct stellar
bodies are laid at rest. When our sun,
for example, reaches the end of its life
span it will of course emit no light, vet
its change from life to death will not
stop its onward journey in the realms
of space at it's present rate of nearly
half million miles day. Just so it
must be with all the other suns, the
whole fifty million that are visible
through the telescope and the countless
millions beyond telescope range.
But in considering this matter of a
burnt out and dead sun we must re-
member that we can look at stars, any
clear night, that may have been we'll
define d suns before our great luminary
was born. If this process of sun-mak-
ing, or star-making, as you choose to
call it, has been going so long does it
not logically follow that there are, at
this very moment, stellar spectres,
dead and dark remains of stars wan
dering through the universe? MANY
astronomers believe this, and none of
them have so far successfully argued
against the theory.
If this be true, we may be looking
directly in the line of dead and dark
star, up there between two bright and
living ones, when we gaze at the
heavens these clear winter nights.
But here is an interesting thought.
If these immense dead bodies are
thus wandering through space, is
there not a possibility that one of
them may wander into the confines of
the solar system and play havoc with
his little brood of planets and moons?
This possibility has been discussed by
some astronomers; but the matter is
one that neither this generation nor the
next one, at least, need trouble itself
about. For this reason: the approach
OF such body would be detected by
astronomers before it could get within
a hundred years of travel from us,
even if it moved at the suns rate of
half million miles per day.
The presence of the planet Neptune,
nearly three billion miles away, was
detected by certain perturbations that
astronomers noted in the movements
of Uranus. Now it is safe to assume
that a body so large as burnt out sun.
coming toward the solar system, would
by its attraction affect our OUTLYING
planets and also the sun, when at least
twenty times farther away than Nep-
tune is. At the rate Neptune travels
In its orbit, it would take him about
twenty-five years to reach the sun,
travelling in a straight line if he should
take a sudden impulse to visit his
parent.
Ever allowing for a spectral tramp
star to take a fancy for calling on US,
it would take it certainly not less than
a hundred years to get here after the
astronomers would have detected its
Intentions, even if it should come at
the SUMS speed of hundred and sixty
million miles in year.
But this question as to what becomes
of the dead stars is one that the astron-
omers seem very chary about discuss
ing. They can see what they believe
to be the process of star making con-
stantly going on, but they cannot see
any dead and dark stars and there is
nothing but analogy, conclusion and
conjecture upon which to base an
opinion.
One thing we certainly know; there
is no stellar spectre now near enough
to the solar system to get here in the
lifetime of anybody now living on the
earth.