Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-10-07

| sis presented in the first part of this arti-
Gle the will have totally lost its light
a million years before it may reach Vega.
Millenniums before this time our entire
posterity will have frozen to death!
Earth will probably pass through the
Tyre without damage" answered one of
reach the constellation. There is only one
chance in million that our solar system
will ever strike one OF these stars. OF
course, if our planet were to collide with
body relatively great, it might be swept
entirely away from the sun. Astronomers
will give the signal many centuries in adj
vance of our reaching any other obstacle
lying directly in our path. Meanwhile we
will jog quietly along through space"
Two effects would result from earth's
or the suns collision with any body in
the Tyre" answered another Savant.
Earth would either become glowing ball
of fire or would lose its present position
in the solar system. If a large body
should strike planet sufficiently hard
to alter It's present poise in space the
suns great attraction would probably
draw it in. Then all living things not
| already frozen out would be frizzled up 1t
might take a year before we would reach
the sun, but we would all be destroyed
before reaching half way there, for earthly
temperature would have gone up to five or
six hundred degrees. Surprising that
should reach this halfway point after the
sun should have sufficiently cooled for us
to withstand its heat? A year would be
but three months long Earth's velocity
would be four times as fast as it is now.
All movable things, including ourselves.
would be thrown off into space by CEN
trfugal force, would our buildings.
Earth would never burn up entirely
even If striking some heavenly body so
hot to set it on fire. 1t would develop
from an incandescent to a gorgeous form,
ultimately cooling down into a solid
again..
Dark Star May Strike Us.
A dark star my collide with our sun, /
am told by other students of the heavens
Recent Investigations indicate that space
abounds with these burned-out suns. many
of them far larger than our own. The dog
star Sirius, for example, has a dark COM
panion star wholly invisible but which can
be measured by delicate astronomic instru-
ments. 1t is equal to our sun In size, but
one of its years makes fifty of ours. One
authority tells me that there probably are
more dark than luminous stars. Each of
these cold suns has undergone the process
in store for Old Sol. Sometimes one re-
| awakens and glows with fire, as did the
star Nova Persei, suddenly visible in the
heavens in February, 1901. This once dead
sun really blaZed forth anew a century
ago, the intervening time being required
for the vanguard of its light waves to reach
us.
picture of what might happen were Old
Sol to collide with dark sun is drawn by
DR.. Simon Newcomb, professor of astron-
omy at Johns Hopkins. Such body, hav-
ing no orbit, is first seen through a great
telescope on the Himalayas. Combining its
mass with that of our sun it imparts to the
latter an unearthly glow, which spreads
over our landscape, whose pebbles glsten
like diamonds. Man sees the sun doubled
In size, its brightness four-fold People
remove to their cellars to keep cool while
fire engines sprinkle the roofs of buildings
Man finally takes refuge in caves. The
ocean boils like a pot, lightning flashes
everywhere and scalding rain falls. Above
the subterranean caverns giving asylum to
the last remnants of humanity bubbles
sea Of hot mud They cannot escape. They
starve.
May Pass Through a Nebula.
The last man may become engulfed in a
fiery mist of that category which astrono-
mers call "nebulae." These are supposed
to be the raw material out of which stars
and planets and moons are made. They
are gaseous bodies, millions of miles in ex-
tent and glowing-some say-with heat so
intense that it could not be measured by
any OF our standards of temperature. Spin
ming with terrific velocity, shrinking and
cooling, they gradually CONCEAL into stars;
fragments of the latter into planets, which
send off lesser fragments. forming moons.
1t was one of these truant mists of glow
Ing gas which set fire to the star Nova
Persei, mentioned above. What II our sun
should pass through of these masses
and add to its heat? And what if earth
itself should become enveloped in one?
The heavens are filled with these floating
bodies Indeed they cover, in an irregular
patchwork, almost the entire background
of the sky. Some astronomers believe them
to be cold masses and, granting that this
is true, the friction caused by the earths
darting through one would be sufficient to
frizzle US all up Some are thousands of
times larger than the entire solar system
and apparently contain solid matter
Collision with a large meteor is feared
by some stargazers whom have visited.
Suppose earth were struck by meteor
one-half its size" one astronomer explain
ed. There may be meteors of such mag
nitude. If there be small ones there
can probably be larger ones. The largest
which has struck the earth within his
toric times has weighed only a few tons,
however. Such bodies falling upon our
crust might kill one or two persons. But
II earth should be struck by meteor half
its size our balance In space would be dis
turbed and the suns great attraction might
draw US IN"
A shower of meteors into the sun itself
might also be fatal, according to still an
other savant. II long continued. such a
bombardment might SO increase the solar
heat as to scorch all living earthly things.
slight meteoric shower falling into the
sun in 1850 Is said to have caused q sudden
outburst OF light. The effect. Immediately
felt on earth. was a magnificent aurora
seen even In the tropics The whole sky.