Evening star., 1939-05-08
By THOMAS X. HENRY.
Star StafY CORRESPONDENT.

FORT DAVIS, Tex, May 8.-The
solar system lies in an unneighborly
region of galactic space, with stars
far apart like villages on a prairie
1t is part of a local system of
far-flung stars which. within an
area traversed by 1870 ,00O- mile sec
ond light in about 100 years, are get
ting thinner and thinner as they
move outward on the arm of great
spiral
Such was the picture presented
before world conference Of astron-
omers at the Mcdonald Observa-
tory here today by DR.. Bertil Lind
blad of the Stockholm Observatory
Recent observations, the Swedish as
tronomer said, have thrown into the
discard the belief of astronomers
for a generation that this immediate
neighborhood of space, where stars
are about five light years apart, Is
thickly populated. 1t is part of q
galaxy which seems to be just be-
ginning to disperse and is part o1
the matter which Is being thrown
of from the center.
Places Of Eternal Light.
At the same time DR.. Lindblad
pictured strange regions of closely
packed stars on the far-distant
edges of empty space which act as
co-ordinated stellar systems-places
of eternal light where stars are 10(
times more closely packed thar
around the sun. Inhabitants of 9
planet within one of these "globulal
clusters" would see sky studded
with hundreds of stars which woulo
have the moonlike appearance OF
the planet Venus on a summer eve
at sea.
The idea of a densely packe6
local system, Dr. Lindblad said, has
been held in the past because the
obscuration of starlight from
regions toward the center of the
Milky Way galaxy because of great
clouds of cosmic dust has made the
stars there seem much closer to-
gether than they really are.
His hypothesis is derived largely
from observations of systems similar
to the galaxy more than 1000 ,00C
light years away across chasms OF
empty space. The largest Of them
appear in the form of slowly un-
winding spirals. Because they seem
to be star masses comparable in size
to the Milky Way galaxy 1t has
been assumed that our own system
viewed from planet in one OF
the other galaxies, would present q
similar appearance. The recent
studies, which can be greatly ex-
tended with the new telescope here
dedicated Saturday and which rep
resents the last word in efficiency
place astronomers for the first time
in q position to prove this hypo-
thesis, DR.. Lindblad said, and at the
same time to make some estimate
of the stage reached by the Milky
Way system in galactic evolution.
Life Cycle of Galaxies.
Galaxies, as pictured by the
Swedish astronomer, have their in
fancies, adolescence and old age like
organisms, but probably are rejuve-
mated again after they have run
their life courses over periods OF
billions of years. First there is an
immense, inchoate, revolving mass
of matter, of some sort, probably gas
and dust. Within this various nu-
cleii of condensation are formed and
the stars-possibly the planets also
are built up around them.
The whole is revolving at enor-
nous speed. The result of this Is
to f1atten the globular conglomera-
ton into a disklike shape, such as
astronomers used to picture for the
present galaxy. The new formed
stars are pushed very close together
in this disk while the speed OF
revolution gets faster and faster
The whole becomes unstable. Great
spiralling arms of stars and cosmit
dust are thrown OF. At first these
arms seem to hug the nucleus, but
gradually get farther and farther
away and at the same time thinner
and thinner. The system becomes
more and more diffuSed. But mean
while matter is pouring back into
the nucleus from another spiral arm
so that eventually it will be reborn
again in the form of the closely
packed disk.
The Milky Way galaxy at present
DR.. Lindblad said. seems to be in q
quite early stage of its career as 9
spiral. The arms still almost hug
the center. Within this center, he
said, it is reasonable to estimate q
close packed mass of about O0,O00,-
OOO, 900 billion stars, more than three
times as many as have been esti-
mated for the entire galaxy up to
the start of the present studies.
Even as the stars In the spiral
arm become thinner and thinner
Dr.. Lindblad explained, they can
not escape from the attraction of the
central mass and continue to move
around It's center. although the pc.
ri0d az tata revolution increases