The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1905-06-23

distance OF the nearest fixed star not less
than 40, 900 diameters of the earth's an
annual orbit; that is, the distance of the
earth from the former is at least 3S, OOO,-
600, 100000 miles, and from the latter
not less than 1000, 900, OOO.O miles!
But this calculation is old, made many
years ago. Take, then, the following,
made by a recent astronomer. In lee
ture at Edinburgh, Professor Grant thus
spoke OF the immensely of space: A rail
way train, travelling night and day at
the rate of fifty miles an hour, would
reach the moon in six months, the sun in
200 years, and Alpha Centauri, the near
est of the fixed stars, in 100000
years. A ball from gun, travelling at
the rate of 200 miles an hour, would not
reach Alpha Centauri in less than 2, 7OO,-
600 years! What do you think of that,
reader? Does it not confound all your
ideas of time and space?
Surprising this ball had started for Al
pha Centauri at the birth of Cheops's
great-grandfather it would even now lie
only at the outset of its journey.
Cheops's great-grandfather handles
Cheops's grandfather on his knees; he in
turn grows up, wakes in years, and is
succeeded by his son, who, again, is sue.
ceeded by Cheops. Cheops comes to
manhood, builds the everlasting pyra-
mids, lives to an antediluvian age, dies,
| &c
on the earth, and pass away; empire after
empire, the Babylonian, Persian, Greek,
Roman. rise and fall, down to this pres
ent year of our Lord; and yet this ball,
which has been rushing on all this time
with uncomfortable velocity, has ad-
vanced, comparatively, but hop, step,
skip, and jump on its way to the nearest
| fixed star
Again, the same lecturer tells us that
light, which travels from one pole of the
earth to the other in about the twenty
| fourth part of second, or nearly 1877
600 miles in a second-a velocity which,
more than million times swifter than
cannon-ball, surpasses all comprehension
would not reach the same star in less
than three years.
| But this is the nearest of the fixed stars.
Light from some of the telescope stars,
we are told, requires 5,76O years to
reach the earth; and from some of these
clusters the distance is so great that
light would take half million of years
| To, fr fhA h.. IL
jeets, not as they really are, but as they
were half 4 million of years ago. These
stars might have become extinct thou
sands of years ago, and yet their light
i might still present itself to u.s.
| Take, again, some recent statement %
Sir Robert Ball. Surprising telegra-
| phic wire to be stretched from earth to
the sun, and an electric wave to travel
at such speed as would enable it to
| place girdle seven times around the
earth in a second, yet eight minutes
| would have to elapse before the electric
wave would reach the sun. Telegraph
ing, however, to the stars would be a
far more tedious matter. Even the
nearest of the stars, Alpha Centauri, is
sunk into space to a distance so over
whelming that the time required for the
| journey is not a question of seconds, or
| of minutes, not of hours, not of days,
| not of weeks, nor even of months; for no
less than four years would have to pass
by before the electricity would have &C
complished this stupendous journey.
Look up tonight" continues Sir Robert
toward the heavens, and among the
thousands of twinkling points which de-
light our eyes there is many a one up
| there so far off that if, after the battle of
Waterloo had been won in 1915, the
Duke of Wellington had telegraphed the
news to these stellar depths, the mes
sage would not yet have been received
there, not withstanding the fact that for
eighty years it has been flashing along
with that lightning velocity which would
carry it seven times around the earth in
the interval between the two ticks of
clock
"But there are stars farther still.
Fortify your eyes with telescope, and
direct it towards the sky. Over our heads
| there are thousands of stars so remote
that, if the news of the discovery of
| America by Columbus had been circulated
| far and wide through the universe by the
instrumentality of the telegraph those
| thousands of stars to which l now refer
| are elevated into bondless space to alti-
tudes so stupendous. that the announce
ment would not yet have reached them.
"And yet we have still one more step
to take. Let US think of the telegraph
wire that is supposed to run from the
earth to one of those stars which are
| only known to us by the impressions they
make on Photographic plate. 1t seems
certain many of these stars are so remote
that if the glad tidings of the first Christ
mas at Bethlehem, 1894 years ago, had
| been disseminated through the universe
| by the swiftest electric current ever
known, yet these stars are so inconceiva-
bly, remote that all the seconds which
have elapsed in the 1894 years of our
present era would not have sufficed for
the journey"
| Startling, amazing, as all these calcu-
lations are, Camille Flammarion, in a
recent number of the Deutsche Revue,
makes a statement which overtops them,
and makes them seem modest in COM
parison. He asserts that, though light
travels so fast, the Photographic lens of
a modern telescope receives impressions
of stars whose thin rays of light have
been millions of years travelling to the
earth; rays which perhaps set out on
| their journey hitherward before this our
earth had started on its appointed course;
says some of the perhaps of stars which
have ran their appointed course which
have vivifed worlds like ours, and have
ages ago been burned out and resolved
into their ultimate atoms, while the
rays they once shed still travel on
ward into space! Finally, latest of all,
comes Seth c. Chandler, LII. D., editor
of The Astronomical Journal, who in a
recent lecture in Boston stated that of
the distances of about a hundred stars
the smallest is about $50, 900 times the
distance of the earth from the sun, but
the distances of the majority are ten to
twenty times greater! A hundred and