The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-06-14

Were person to stand on the ocean
beach and count the number of water
waves that break upon the strand, it
would be found that about six seconds
of time are required for each wave
about 10 per minute Now, since light
travels 186,330 miles per second, and
each wave of red light has length of
1880 of an inch, it follows that
when the ruddy beams from the star
Antares enter our eyes, shaft of
light, 1S6,330 miles in length, COM
posed of nearly four hundred trillions
of waves, piles into the retina in a
single second. Suppose that we could
slow down the tremendous velocity
of these red waves until they travelled
with exactly the same velocity as the
water waves before referred to, viz,
six seconds for each and every wave,
it would require 100000 years to do
what is ordinarily done in one sec
ond! Rather long wait just to catch
a glimpse of red light!
No one can comprehend what a
hundred miles into space are, not to
mention a thousand, million, or a
billion And yet we must have some
standard, some unit of measurement,
for the estimation of these distances,
enormous as they are. The unit gen.
orally used in comparing star dis
tances is known as the Tight year."
being the space covered by a light
wave travelling 186,330 miles per sec
ond, during the period of one year.
Incomprehensible as is this unit of
measurement, nevertheless our near
est star neighbor, the brightest star
in the constellation of the Centaur, is
just four of these units distant from
our earth. In other words, it would
take us four long years to reach the
Centaur, were we to travel on the
wings of light, every second of that
time speeding 186,330 miles outward
into space.
Not the least of the wonders of light
is the truth that, through it's agency,
ordinary deeds and ordinary happen
ings, as we'll as all other kinds of af-
fairs in this busy world of ours, are
immortalized. We are accustomed to
the idea that souls are immortal, that
energy cannot be annihilated, that
matter cannot be destroyed, but what
of this extraordinary Immortality of
deeds? Simply this: light that is re-
f1ected or given off from an object
carries an image, a picture of the OBJ
ject, with it on it's travels, no matter
how long the journey or whittier it
may tend.
When these image-carrying light
waves enter the eye, the picture they
bear is revealed, whether the waves
have been only the infnitesimal frac-
ton of second in coming from the
face of friend across the street, or
whether they have reached the eye
after a jaunt of 100000 years through
space, from the flashing scintillations
of far-off star. Even as we see our
nearest star neighbor not as it is
today, but as it was four years ago,
the light that is reflected to this star
from our planet carries pictures of
the earth as it was forty-eight months
ago, and any person, if at that dis
lance from the earth, and equipped
with some means of collecting the
light waves, would see events and
deeds that had transpired on this earth
four years ago.
Suppose we had such an apparatus
and could out-travel light. We could
journey to the Pole star, sixty light
years from the earth, and behold! we
would see the earth as it was sixty
years before! If we travelled still fur
out into space, and caught up with
the light waves that left us, 400 years
or more ago, we would see Columbus
discovering America! The waves that
left us about 700 years since would
give us the picture of Runnymede
with John, surnamed Lakeland, sign
ing the Magma Charta.
Nearly 1000 light years from the
earth speed the waves that bear the
story of Caesars fame and the glory
that was Rome's. Still further out
hurting through the eternity of I'm
ending space, is picture from fal
back in the dusty corridors of time
picture of the earth when it wa.
void and without form.