The record-union., 1897-07-21
PROBLEMS OF THE SKIES.
TRYING TO DISCOVER THE
PLAN OF THE UNIVERSE.
Does Intelligent Life Exist on
Other Planets Than
Our Own?

closing years of the nineteenth century,
and both may be fairly considered stu
pendous No other adjective is at all
adequate to describe them. one is
the plan of the universe; the other is
the possibility of the existence OF intel
ligent life on some other ORB than the
earth. Just now, when the new
Yerkes telescope has been installed in
its home on the shores of Lake Geneva,
in Wisconsin, seems to be a fitting time
to sum up the state in which these two
problems stand to-day the chances OF
their partial or total solution, and the
part which the new lens, the largest
ever made. may be expected to take in
bringing to light facts bearing on these
two questions.
First, however. a word as to the
means whereby the greatest astrono-
mical discoveries of the future may be
made Big telescopes will do great
deal Much of our knowledge or the
planets must depend on the possibility
of making great lenses which shall
bring the surface Of the earth's neigh
bors closer and closer to the earth S
observatories. But that is not all
The spectroscope has reached out over
space and brought news from distant
suns which no telescope, however large,
could ever do. 1t has shown that in
stars so distant that it takes light a
score of years travelling with incon-
| ceivable rapidity to traverse the space
which separates them from the earth,
so distant that the biggest and best
telescopes never magnify their images
larger than mere points of light-it has
shown that in these distant orbs there
exist the same elements which are
found in this earth The existence of
sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron, DIS
muth and hydrogen in Betelguese, the
bright red star of Orion, has been es-
tablished beyond reasonable doubt by
means of the spectroscope.
More wonderful still are the revela-
tions of the camera. Photography IS
Just beginning to be applied to astron-
omy, but already its revelations are
doubling the possibilities of the starry
science. 1t is not hard to see why this
should be as it is. No matter how
keen the eye even though aided by the
best of telescopes, it will grow weary
after a longer or shorter period or
watching. The delicate retina is ca
pable of it's best work for only few
moments at a time. Not so with the
Dhotographic eye The camera never
tires. Fitted to the great telescope 1t
steadily records what it sees, patiently
adding up hour by hour the faintest
rays of light from the farthest depths
of space. until the gradual accumula-
ton shows stars and nebulae which
masses of gases, the material for un-
born suns, are thus revealed. so gent
ly do the rays Of light from these elu-
sive nebulae fall on the human eye
that they produce no effect, but their
repeated washing on the sensitive plate
of the photographer, like the water
falling on the rock, eventually makes
the impression which tells the wonder
full story. The longer the camera
looks the better it sees.
And who shall put limitations on the
| science of the future? 1t is by no
means beyond the range of possibility
that some new means yet undreamed OF
may be found to win the secrets of the
| sky.
AS to the first of the two problems
| the plan of the universe-it must be
confessed scientific knowledge is con-
| spicuous by it's absence. A few Things
seem pretty we'll established. All the
stars are in notion There is absolute
lv nothing at rest. The so-called fixed
| stars are only fixed relatively. Our
own SUM- with all it's attendant planets,
| is rushing through space, but whittier
| bound no one knows. The stars are,
roughly speaking, grouped about the
milky way To the naked eye they
seem to be pretty we'll distributed over
| the whole sky. but the farther one goes
| from the milky way on either side, the
fewer are the telescope stars. 1t would
seem that the stars were all arranged
then in a kind of disk-like shape. An
| other point, and one which is sure to
| he surprising at first, is that there is
good reason to suppose that there is a
| limit to the number of the stars. That
is to say, if telescopes large enough or
photoeraphic plates sensitive enough
could be constructed, they would fail
| to add to the number of the known
stars. When one tries to name what
| is beyond this limit-the nothingneSs-
imagination fails; words have no mean
ing. Now, as has been said, all the
stars are in motion. When their mo-
ton is at right angles to our own, the
| lapse of time will show that they nave
changed their positions with relation
| to each other, and here is where the
| improved instruments of modern times
come into play. The most minute mo-
tions can now be measured. When,
| however, a star is moving directly
away from us, its position with respect
| to the neighboring stars may remain
absolutely the same, and then the spec
| troscope tells the story. Exactly, how,
there is not the space here to tell, but 1t
| is a fact that motions in the line OF
sight, as it is termed, can be accurately
measured by this means. Now all the
known motions are being carefully plot
| ted on charts and studied to see if there
| is any sign of law governing the
whole system. So far there is absolute
/ " no indication of guiding principle.
Each sun seems to be bent on continu-
| ing it's own way without regard to its
neighbors. They seem to be going in
all directions, and yet the human mind
| is so constructed that it refuses to ad-
| nit the possibility of such a chaos as
| the motions indicate. Time and again
| efforts have been made to prove that
there is a central sun, and that all
things else in the universe are revolv-
| ing around it. All such attempts in
the past have failed, and the chances
are that they will continue to fail. This
| is however, not to say that there is not
a definite law governing all the stars;
only that il seems impossible that any
one sun is so pre-eminent over the rest
as to make. them its satellites. The
solution seems a great way off, and