The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-03
MAGNITUDE OF THE UNIVERSE.
speculations Upon a Vast Subject by
 an Astronomer.

OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES Opoh d ' dst SupJSCl py
 an Astronomer.
 Imagine round our solar system as a center for in matters relating to the universe our whole system is merely a poinD sphere with a radius four hun sun. An idea of this distance may be dred thousand times the distance of the gained by reflecting that light, making the circuit of the earth seven times in i a second, and reaching us from the sun in eight minutes and twenty seconds, would require seven years to reach the surface of the sphere we have sup posed. Now the first result of meas ures of parallax is that within this { enormous sphere there is, besides our sun in the center, only a single star; namely. Alpha Centauri.
 Now suppose another sphere, having a radius eight hundded thousand times the distance of the sun, so that it's sur face is twice as far as that of the inner sphere. By the law of cutes the vol ume of space within this second sphere is eight times as great as that within the first, So far as can be determined, there are about eight stars within this sphere. We cannot be quite sure of the number, because there may be stars within the sphere of which the parallax is not yet detected; and of those supposed to be within 1t, one or two are so near the surface that we cannot say whether they are really within or without it. But the number < eight is not egregiousIy in error.
 We may imagine the spheres ex- tended in this way indefinitely, but the result for the number of stars within them becomes uncertain, owing to the increasing difficulties of measuring parallaxes so minute. The general trend of such measures up to the pres i ent time Is that the number of stars In ( any of these spheres will be about equal to the units of volume which they comprise when we take for this unit the smallest and innerrnost of the spheres, hayeing a radius four hundred thousand times the sun's distance. We are thus enabled to form some general idea of how thickly the stars are sown through space. We cannot claim any numerical exactness for this idea, but in the absence of better methods fl does afford us some basis for reasoning,
 Now we can carry on our computa- tion as we. supposed the farmer to measure the extent of his wheat field Let us suppose that there are one hun dred and twenty five million stars irl \ the heavens. There is an exceedingly rough estimate, but let us make the supposition for the time being. Accept ing the view that they are nearly I equally scattered throughout space, ii will follow that they must be contained within a volume equal to one hundred and twenty-five million times the sphere we have taken as our unit. We l find the distance of the surface of this sphere by extracting the cube root of this number, which gives us five hun 1 dred. We may therefore say, as the l result of a very rough estimate, that the number of stars we have supposed would be contained within a distance found by multiplying four hundred 1 thousand times the distance of the sun | by five hundred; that is. that they are contained within region whose boun- diary is two hundred million times the distance of the sun. This is a distance through which light would travel ir about thirty three hundred years.
 3 1t is not impossible that the number of stars is much greater than that w have supposed. Let us grant thai there are eight times as many. or one billion. Then we should have to ex. l tend the boundary of our universe twice as far, carrying it to a distance