THE NEW PLANET.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 72, 26 March 1921, Page 20

THE NEW PLANET.

SHOCKING CATASTROPHE. I I ■ I MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. The lie.-vs that another planet hs.* been , dVcovered by Comas Sola, at Bar--1 eelona, Spain, need not perturb us ovor--1 n>ll. i). TliereTire *o many of them about 1 that; one more won't matter. At first I when tie d'scoveries of tiny planets j were made each was rhrUtened —the ; h'r.-t. was named 1 "ore*--but now that J over 81X1 of the little things have been J put on the star map, all that tliis parI tienlar object win pet will be a number, I like a motor car or a dog license. A MISSISd I'LAXET. Long before Ceres was discovered the astronomers of the world were looking ■ for a mis.-ing planet, says a writer in j the Sydney '"Si-.n." The orbits of the I planets, .<_ was discovered, were arranged m a mathematical series of distances from the sun; but in that ordered scale there wa.s an unaccountable :rap. Tiiere J was one vacant chair around the table, i< , ne big planet was apparently lost, ' .;.■', 'ii. or strayed. Telescopes searched I ;l- calculated orbit in vain; it was officially reported as missing. Then on tie ] lirsl day 01 tnis century an .Italian ! a.-tronomer. l'iazzi. picked up the , missing ship of the skies. It seemed 'very shrunken; its diameter was only 500 miles. 1 cres was rather _ a <1:.--I appointment, until the discovery was made that it was but many similar small planets in tbc same orbit. The mystery was solved. The lost ■pianM. had been found —but in pieces. It 1 lmd explode.!, and Ceres was merely the largest of the fragments.. What caused the explosion is not definitely known, but tiie accepted theory is that it exploded by centrifugal for'-e. It had pimply whirled itself into fragments. The theories that that planet was exploded by planetary Sinn Feiners or RolUhevik* is discredited by astronomers, are the theories that it was caused by the collapse of w-jiat civilisation was there owing ti> a planet war. or that it was caused by the introduction of planet-wide prohibition, or that it jus; exploded with indignation Anyhow, it ha.d gone, and all that wa* left were the pieces for the astronomers to pick up. They have been industri- • otisly collecting the remains ever since SVVEEPINXi UP THE REMAIN'S. Naturally the largest portions -were diseo\ered first. The present one Is of [ \±'Z magnitude, seen from the earth. To understand how faint that is, look up on a clear winter starlit night and pick out tae faintest star you can see. Thin will be of the uih magnitude. A 1"2."2 magnitude, star would give 250 times '!e*s Tght than that, f<? there is no chance, of seeing the thing. It was . discovered on a photographic plate which Is kept turning with the revolution of , the earth, so that it records every star ,as a point. On .such a plat* any mov- . ins abject would make a streak Instead .of a spot. That streak might be 'a , minor or major planet, or a cometarv . mass. There is the remote possibility that ,tv ~ new planet may be a big' fellow somewhere out in space far beyond tbc. furthest known, Xeptune; but'the pro- • liability is that it is a tiny planet close handy. Or it might be a eonvetary mass. This stream of fragments revolves in an orbit-between Mars and Jupiter. It r fi composed of all .-izes of planets, from Ceres down to a toy one only flje or ten miles 111 diameter. This Jiewly-di<-rovered one is about e=r:\t milesthrotm-h , On the scale of the universe it was regarded, as a speck of cosmic dust. t LEVITY OR G.RAVITV. Vihat would it be. like on the now . little planet? Rather dull perhaps 8,,r ] as gravity on aueh a little globe wonld be only one-thousandth as st'ionp as or. the earth, a child could throw a "ball at a rate over 30ft per second, and that. ■ball would go on and on up and up for ever until it hit something else in spa. c. ; But in tne act of tjirowng that ball tht: . kiddie would hurl himself off his planet . for thousands of miles, and mightn't • come down until he was grown up. Uoir- ; ever, as there, would certainly be no water on that little earth and the atmosphere niu»t be of extreme rarity and the cold intense, there i= little uro- , oauihty of life there at all.

i Uow in-significant this swarm of fragI ments really is .-an be understood when tie whole ,"i)0 mi far discovered make up I only I-30il0th j.art ol the. earth's mass. | Vet t'ne.sc tiny planets have their uses I They have nerved to -ieterminc tiie di*- ; tance of tiie .-un from the earth. a» they [provide many convenient observations, i instead of tiie rare chances of o-bserva-j tions provided by the big planets. 3 If anybody wants lo know the whereabouts of the new planet, it is. at tbe border oi the constellations Leu a,_d - Cancer, mining through Cancer in a t west—out ii-* esi direction, and doubtless t rather annoyed at the publicity given to s its doing".