The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-08-24

| to the present day. 1t was the appear.
ance OF one Of these blazing new stars
in 1872, which is said to have been 40
brilliant as to cast a shadow, that de.
termined Tycho Brahe to desert his
laboratory for an observatory, and so
he became the most celebrated astron.
omer Of his time. Many OF these new
stars have been observed and studied
by the aid Of the telescope spectro-
camera and the telemicrometer. and il
is gratifying to national pride that the
majority OF the fifteen or sixteen new
stars discovered in recent years were
found and noted by the working fore.
Of the Harvard Observatory.
While the history of astronomy
shows us we can dismiss any super
stitious fears Of results to our own
earth from these new stars, the phe.
nomena they present are among the
most awe inspiring and sublime the
astronomer contemplates and beholds
The tremendous changes they indicate
are sufficient to give wings to the
boldest imagination. II their sudden
blazing out into splendor and later dis.
appearance means an explosion of a
ton Of all the planetary worlds by
which 1t may be surrounded.
There are. however, other theories
to account for them. Professor Bick-
erton's theory Of these new stars as
explained in a lecture a few years ago
at the Colonial Institute in London, ia
that the countless suns Of the stellar
system are what Is sometimes called
the star dust of the Milky Way and
travel in two great star streams and
in opposite directions. Passing each
other at tremendous speed, these
streams attract each other. and some
times particles Of suns are torn from
their outer edges, which coalesce and
form a third body of terrific heat and
energy. and that this body finally ex-
plodes and is resolved into atomic dust.
These explosions. he argues. take place
only in the congested portion OF the
Milky Way and are only seeming ex-
ceptions to the fundamental law OF
the universe, namely, that 1.-The stars
describe paths under the general at
traction Of the stellar system without
interfering with one another" Kap-
teyn, the astrophysicist may be said
to have proved in 1904 the exist
ence of these two intermngling star
streams, and that the great majority
Of the stars belong to one or the other
Of these two streams, though there are
groups or star drifts which seem
scarcely, II at all, to move with these
streams. the Pleiades and the Orion
stars being among these.
On the other hand. Professor H. H.
Turner. Savilian Professor OF Astron.
omy, Oxford University, in 1912 pro-
pounded a new and startling theory Of
the universe. He held that the whole
community Of stars. numbering, &C
cording to his estimate, at least a
thousand millions, is suspended in
space in the shape Of a somewhat fiat
tened globe, having the Milky Way for
its equatorial belt, the control Of the
whole not being as in our own solar
system, one central sun, but in what
he calls democracy of stars, the seat
Of government, so to speak, being sit
uated in every star in turn as in or
dered movement II assumes the central
space, though 1t does not, like our sun,
radiate heat and energy to all. That
function he assigns to, or suggests be-
longs in, a Supreme Intelligence that
men call God, who from the centre Of
the universe sustains, controls and
guides all.