The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-06-19

/ wonderful buildings that cross the ocean;
| brilliant and busy cities: palaces and
| temples; libraries which are intellectual
museums: the arts of sculpture and paint
| ing. which idealize reality; musical in
| spirations that make US forget common
| tnings; the works of intellectual genius
that investigate the mysteries OF worlds
ana carry Us into the Infinite-and we live
happily IN the midst of this radiant life of
| winch We become an integral part. But
All TINS beauty. all these flowers and fruits,
| Will pass away
| The earth has been born and it will also
| die. 1t viii come to an end either through
| Old age, when its vital elements have been
| exhausted, or from the extinction of the
sun, upon whose rays IFS life depends.
IL may also end accidentally from a
| COLLISION with some heavenly body en-
countered on its course. but this end of the
/ world is of all others the most improbable.
IL may, we say, die a natural death by
! the slow absorption of its vital element,
| and, III truth, it il probable that air and
water are both diminishing, for oceans
| ana the atmosphere seem formerly TO have
! been much more extensive than now.
water has penetrated the terrestrial crust
ana combined chemically with the rocks,
ana the oxygen, nitrogen and caroonic
acld composing our atmosphere seem also
TO be undergoing q slow absorption.
through the mist of future ages the
| thoughtful person may forsee the earth
| growing cold in the sleep OF death, having
been deprived of its atmosphere which,
IKE the yapors OF a greenhouse, protect it
against the glacial bleakness of space.
From the SUBMITS of mountains eternal
SHOWS win descend like a shroud over the
great table-lands and valleys. driving be-
fore them life and civilization, and cover
ing forever the cities ana nations in
their path. Life and human activity
| Will gradually be contracted between
the tropics; ST. Petersburg. London,
Paris, Vienna. Constantinope and Rome
viii fall TO sleep in succession under an
eternal shroud. For many centuries equa-
torial humanity will undertake useless
Arctic expeditions in search of Paris,
Lyons, Bordeaux and Marseilles. The
shores of seas and the map of the earth
will be changed Life and respiration will
have ceased, except in the equatorial zone,
till the day when the last tribe, already
dead with cold and hunger, will sit down
upon the shores of the only remaining sea,
under the rays OF pale sun that hence
forth. here below, will only give light to
moving tomb. revolving around body
whose hight and heat are useless. Over
come by cold the last human family is
touched by the finger of death and its
bones are buried beneath eternal ice.
In future ages the historian may write:
Here lies all mankind and world that
has lived Here lie all dreams of ambition,
ell glorious military conquests, all famous
financial transactions, all the systems of
an imperfect science and all VOWS of mortal
love! Here lie all the beauties of the earth ~
But no mortuary monument will mark the
spot where the poor planet breathed It's
last sigh.
Perhaps the earth will last till the ex-
tinction of the sun. This would not alter
our fate-we would still die Of cold only
the process of extinction would be pro-
longed. In the first case few million
years, in the second, twenty, thirty mil
lion years, or perhaps more, would bring
the end of the world; but it is only mat
ter of time. Humanity will have been
transformed both physically and morally
long before reaching its apogee and long
before its decadence.
The sun will become extinct. 1t is con-
stantly losing part OF its heat, for the
force it radiates into space is well nigh in
conceivable. The heat mitted by this lu-
minous body in an hour would raise two
thousand nine hundred million cubic
myriameters of water from the freezing to
the boiling point and almost all this heat
is lost in space; the amount arrested and
utilized by the planets in the maintenance
OF their life is insignificant in comparison
with the total emission. If the sun is
still condensing with rapidity sufficient
TO produce an amount of heat equal to the
loss, or if the descent of meteorites which
are necessarily falling TO its surface can
make up the difference, this star is not
now becoming colder; but, if the contrary
is the case, its period of refrigeration has
probable. for the spots which
periodically appear upon its
surface can only be considered as a mani
festation of its cooling. The day will
come when these spots will be many times
more numerous than now, and when they
t,Nr larf 80
solar surface. From century to century
the observation will gradually but irregu-
larly increase. for the first fragments of
the crust covering the liquid incandescent
surface will soon break away to be replaced
by new formations. Future ages will see
the sun sometimes extinguished and some
times shining. until the distant day when
its entire surface will finally be invaded by
cold when its last intermittent and pale
rays will vanish forever, and when the
enormous red ball will turn dark and
never again enliven nature with the CRATE
full blessing of light.
We have already seen twenty-five stars
flash with a spasmodic CLEAN and then
fall into deathiike extinction; already
shining stars hailed by our fathers have
disappeared from celestial charts; large
number of red stars have entered on their
period of extinction the sun is only a star
and will share the fate of its sisters. Suns,
like worlds. are born TO die, and in eternity
their prolonged career will have lasted but
the space of q morning.
Then the sun, an obscure star, but still
warm and filled with electricity, and with
out doubt vaguely lighted by undulating
CLEANS from the magnetic dawn, will be
an immense world, inhabited by strange
creatures. Planetary tombs Will continue
to revolve about it till the solar republic is
entirely blotted from the book of life and
disappears, 10 leave room for other plan
etary systems, for other suns, other worlds,
other human races and other sOuls--Our
successors in universal and eternal history.
Such is the destiny of the earth and of
all worlds. Must the conclusion be drawn
that the day will come when the universe
will be but one immense funeral tomb2
No; else il would have been only that
since eternity began. There are other
things in nature than blind matter; an in
teilectual law OF progress governs the en-
tire creation; the force that rules the uni
verse cannot remain inactive. New stars
will rise from the ashes of the past. The
conjunction of old debris will cause new
flames to spring forth, and the change of
motion into heat will recreate nebule and
worlds.
Universal death will never reign
Camille FLAMNARIoN.
THE MOON OF OTHER DAYS.