McNairy County independent. (Selmer, McNairy County, Tenn.) 1902-1969, 1916-03-03
A&NASASAV1ZNAVAN
NEW YORK.
LETTER
EDITOR INDEPENDENT:

rum carly CHlluHUOu, leu NY tHlHh-
ing and intelligent parents, | have
been interested in science, and dis
coveries in that domain have always
been attractive to me.
My father had wonderful knowl-
edge of such things, and especially of
astronomy and geology, so that when
we came to Washington and moved
among the experts in those sciences,
they were astonished that a farmer
from Tennessee knew so much about
such things. If the Scotch philosoph-
err Thomas Dick had the right con-
ception of the truth, my father is even
now, in another existence, following
up that pursuit of knowledge which
he loved so well on this earth. Some
writer's believe that after death here.
our souls will be transferred from one
bright planet to another. ever pro-
NOTED to higher and nobler exist
ence. That is far better than the
doctrine preached BY one fanatic in
Washington (who it is we'll to know,
utterly failed in his calling) that our
own luminary, the sun, is nothing
more nor less than hell itself, kept
bright and hot by the burning of sin
full souls. | prefer to believe that
God created nothing 10 vain; that He
| is the embodiment Of love and life,
and that the doctrine of eternal pun
ishment at any place is the invention
of sinful man himself, for his own pur-
poses.
The two most interesting instru-
ments of science to me are the teles-
cope and microscope.
Who can look up into the heavens
on clear winter night, to that vast
expanse studded with stars and un-
utterably bright" as SHAKESPEARE says.
and think Of the mysteries of that
numberless host, as far back as the
Milky Way, itself composed of bril-
liant suns, without having a feeling of
awe and reverence come over him; a
deep sense of the sublimity and pow
err of the Hand that made and keeps
them going?
Science has proved to US that these
stars, except the few planets which
compose our own solar system, are all
suns, some of them many times as
large as our own sun, which, itself, is
one million, four hundred thousand
times as large as the earth. The
moon, which is 100000 miles fromus,
could revolve inside the sun If the lat
ter were hollow, and leave space of
100000 miles on each side of its or
bit. 1t takes light eight minutes to
come from the sun to our earth, nine
ty three millions Of miles. The nearest
star is so far away that light would
be about three years in making the
trip. although it moves at the rate Of
10000 miles every second. The
great sun Campus, the largest known,
has 1874 times the diameter Of our sun,
and is $4,000 times as bright. Its
mass would make two and half mil
lions of our own little sun. 1t out
shines all the other stars except Sir
its, the Dog Star, but Campus is so
far away that it takes sixty-fve years
for its light to come to US. 1t sends
out rays of red, green, orange and
purple. 1t is now seen as an evening
star after ten o'clock. south of the
the 32d parallel. 1t was worshipped
ia ancient Egypt, and wild tribes in
Africa still bow down to it. There
are hundreds of thousands of these
suns shown by ordinary telescopes,
and the number is immensely increas-
ed when one looks through the greas
rehectors like that on Mount Wilson,
California. When Andrew Carnegie,
who donated the instrument, was al
lowed to look through it, he saw
spiral nebula, hundreds of millions
of miles across, the raw material for
another sun and system of worlds. If
all these suns have worlds around
them, as is believed, the worlds are
utterly invisible to US, but their num-
Der must be as the sands of the sea.
Simon Newcomb estimated that the
universe is so vast that ray of light
would take $4,000 years to cross it.;
that if the orbit of our fartherest
planet, Neptune, FIVE thousand millions
of miles across, were represented by