The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1924-08-23
THOUSANDS
OF WORLDS
ARE KNOWN
Number Of Solar Systems
Probably Reaches
Millions.
Times Warrington BuTedT,
1922 NeO York Ave-

XVI AsHTNGTON, Aug. 23.-Why
IW worry about whether Mars is
- inhabited?
Scattered throughout the infinite
spaces Of the heavens on one scale
and compressed into any small OBJ
ject in another scale, scientists say,
there may be countless other worlds
giant worlds, dwarf worlds, worlds
in the making and worlds that are
dead.
You grasp the first idea when as
tronomers emphasize. as does DR..
Charles G. Abbot Of the Smithsonian
Institution. that our sun is merely
a star in the universe and the other
stars are suns. Each probably has
It's own planets whirling around it,
just as Mercury. Venus, the Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus anr
Neptune spin around our sun.
You grasp the second idea when
physicists emphasize, as they do at
the United States Bureau Of Stand
ards, that all atoms OF matter are
made up of incredibly tiny electrons
that whirl around a central proton.
or sun" just as our planets whirl
around our sun. In short, each atom
has its own busy little solar system.
far too small to be seen even under
the most powerful microscope.
They Are Small
The tininess OF these little
worlds" is amazing. In bubble Of
hydrogen gas no larger than the
letter 20" there are billions of atoms.
II this tiny bubble were magnified
to the size Of the earth, each atom
in the bubble would then be about
as large as a tennis bali and each Of
the worlds" in these atoms one
thousand times smaller still.
Who knows, then, but what there
may be uncounted billions OF worlds
swarming around the stars in the
heavens far beyond the limits Of our
conception; or that our own planets
are not just infnitesimal specEs,
like the electrons OF the atom, in the
boundless scheme of the infinite?
Microscopes fail utterly with the
atom and even the biggest tele-
scopes of astronomers give only a
hint as to the secrets Of the heavens.
For instance. in discussing the
alleged canals" on Mars, DR.. Abbot
says that the testimony Of two
eminent astronomers is as widely
contradictory as would be expected
from two persons who should at
tempt to describe the landscape Of
the moon without ever having used
a telescope.
Moon Is Close
The moon is the only other world
of which the telescopes afford a
really good view. Under the giant
lens at the Mt. Wilson observatory,
the moon becomes a neighbor only
fifty miles away. in effect. The
mountains and the dry ocean bot.
toms Of this dead world can be seen
clearly and their sizes calculated
with fair accuracy. If a city the
size Of New York or Chicago ex-
listed there it would be observed
W1lIlOul NiiASullyf buI Tic HAOOIl 10
a waterless, airless world from which
all life has long since departed.
The moon is our closest neighbor.
The sun Is 400 times farther away
and the stars are many times more
distant. If this same giant tele-
scope were mounted on the sun, the
earth-if the earth could be seen at
all-would appear through it a dot
no larger than the period at the end
of this sentence. But the sun is
much larger than the earth, so we
get bigger image; SO large, in fact,
that twenty-five or more globes the
size of this one could be dumped into
one of those tremendous fiery
chasms that we call sun spots
At that, though, the great modern
telescopes reveal a lot. They show
swarms of stars invisible to the max
ed eye; stars so far away that it re-
quires 10000 years for their light to
reach the earth; stars so dim that
two-year exposure is required for
photographing them.