The Portland daily press., 1897-03-09

shown shan the diversity Of their exist
ing physical conditions. 1t was seen that
sun and stars. far from being the cool,
earthlike, habitable bodies that Herschel
thought them (surrounued by glowing
clouds, and protected from undue heat
by otherssclouds), ale IN truth seething
caldrons of fiery liquid, or gas made
viscid by condensation, with lurid en-
yelopes OF belohing flames. It was soon
made clear, also, particularly by the
studies of Rutherford and Of Secchi, that
stars differ among themselves in exact
constitution or condition. There are
white or Sirian stars, whose spectrum
revels in the Lines of hydrogen; yellow
or solar stars (our sun being the type),
showing various metallic vapors; aud
sundry red stars, with banded spectra
indicative of carbon compounds; be-
sides, the purely gaseous stars or more
recent discovery, which Prof. Pickering
has specially studied. Zollner's famous
Interpretation of these Universities, as in
dicatlve of varying stages of cooling, has
been called In question, but the general
proposition stands
The assumption that different star
types mark varying stages of cooling has
the'further support OF modern physics.
any way in which the suns radiated
energy may be restored, or otherwise
made perpetual, since meteorio impact
has been shown to be-under existing
conditions, at any rate-inadequate In
accordance with the theory of Helmholtz,
the chief supply of solar energy is held
to be contraction Of the solar mass itself,
aud plainly this must have Its limits.
Therefore, unless some means as yet I'M
recognized is restoring the lost energy to
thesstellar bodies, each of them must
gradually lose its ulster, and come to
condition of qualification, seeming ster
ility, and frigid darkness. In the case
of our own particular star. according to
the estimate of Lord Kelvin, such Gull
mir alton appears likely to occur within
five or six million years.
But BY far the strongest support OF
such a forecast az this is furnished by
those stellar bodies which even now APP
pear to have cooled to the final stage OF
star DEVELOPMENT and ceased to shine.
OF this GLASS examples in miniature are
furnished by the earth and the smaller of
it's companion planets. But there are
larger bodies of the same type out In
stellar space-veritable OZARK stars
invisible, yet nowadays clearly reoog-
nized.
The opening up Of this Astronomy of
the invisible" is another of the great
achievements of our century, and again
it is Bessel t0aawhom the honorsof discov-
cry is due. While testing his stars for
parallax, that astute observer was led
to infer, from certain unexplained aber-
rations of motion, that various stars,
Sirius himself famong the number. are
accompanied by invisible companions,
and. in 1910 he definitely predicated the
existence Of such clark stars. The
correctness of the inference was shown 20
years later, when AIvan Clark, Jr., sthe
American optician, while testing new
lens, discovered the companion OF Sirius,
which proved thussto he family lumin-
GUS. Since then the existence OF quite
invisible star companions has been
proved by the testimony of the ubiquit-
GUS spectroscope.
One of the most surprising accomplish
ments of that Instrument is the power
to record the fight of a luminous object
directly in the line of vision. If the
luminous body approaches swiftly, its
Eraunhofer lines are shifted from their
normal position toward the violent end
of the spectrum: If ft recedes, the lines
shift in the opposite direction. The
actual motion of stars whose distance Is
unknown may be measured in this way.
But In certain cases the light lines are
seen.to osoillnte on the spectrum at re2u-
lar intervals. Obviously the star send
ing such light is alternately approaching
and receding, and the Inference that 1t
is revolving about a companion Is un-
ayOfdat)lo