A NEW MYSTERY OF

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2283, 5 February 1912, Page 7

A NEW MYSTERY OF

THE SKIES. ♦ BOTTOM OP THE UNIVERSE TO BE FATHOMED. On the summit of Mount Wilson, in California, is the great observatory from which has just come the news of the birth of a new world. On the photographic plate of a spiral neubla the astronomers have found a body being throvn off just as required by the latest theory of the origin of our own solar system. The new world is already, the scientists say, 150,000,000,000 miles away from the parent body, which is 500,000,000,000 miles in diameter. Such figures confound the imagination. Among the mysteries of the sky which most puzzle astronomers are these so-called spiral nebulae. They exist everywhere in astonishing numbers, they are stupendous in magnitude, they are almost monstrous in their bizarre forms, and in the appearance of blind, irresistible force which they present, and, as we have said, they have lately been regarded as the probable embryos of future solar systems, whirlpools in the protoplasmic matter of the universe, out of which new suns and worlds are being spun as sparks of fire are flung from a whirring pin-wheel. But we shall know more about these marvellous creations presently, for a new telescope is coming which will give the astronomer just the increase of power that he needs, and the revelations that it will make in this direction may revolutionise astronomy. This will be incomparably the most powerful telescope ever constructed. Its Immense glass mirror is 100 inches in diameter. In its optical properties. it may compare, in perfection, with the lenses of the eye, but it will gather at its focus 250,000 times as much light as falls upon the human retina—as the picture receiv» ing portion of the eye is termed. The reason of this is that a mirror or lens, of any kind, collects light in proportion to the square of its diameter. The pupil of the human eye is, on the average, one-fifth of an inch in diameter, or one five-hundredth of the. diameter of the telescopic eye which will survey the heavens from the top of Mt. Wilson. Now, the square of 500 is to the square of unity as 250,000 to 1, whence it is clear that the new telescope will have 250,000 times the light-grasping power of the natural eye. This is more than six times the power of the greatest refracting telescope now in existence. In order that a man might see as much with his unassisted eye as the new telescope will see, he would have to have a head 333 feet in diameter. With a head of that size the pupil of his eye would be as large as the mirror of the great telescope. But,then, in order really to see all that the telescope will reveal this human Brobdingnag would have to arm his gigantic eye with microscopes magnifying several thousand diameters the objects seen by it. A perfect telescopic lens, or mirror, will bear, under ideal conditions of the atmosphere, a magnifying power of 100 diameters to the inch. The ideal magnifying power of the 100-ln. telescope will, then, be 1.0,000 diameters, or 100,000,000 areas ; that is to say, with such a power the moon would be brought, according to Prof. Garrett P. Serviss, from whom wo quote, within an apparent distance of about twenty-four miles from the observer’s eye, and its landscapes would bo magnified in area 100,000,000 times. In other words, any spot on the moon, such as a volcanic crater, appear in the telescope 100,000,000 times larger than t Q the naked eye. The planet mars, when in favourable opposition, would he brought within an apparent distance comparable witty the actual distance between London and Teheran, and its “canals” an'l other mysterious markings would be magnified 100,000,000 times in area. Professor George E. Hale, the director of the observatory, has already demonstrated with the GO-in. reflector telescope now at his command that the sun is covered at times with immense electric vortices —known as sunspots—which speed away over its surface like cyclones upon the earth, but with a development of energy that is appalling to contemplate. The dark spots seen with smaller tellescopes are apparently the bases of these solar cyclones where they whirl upon the fiery surface of the solar globe with a force that would set the earth spinning like a top in a furnace blast. Every such explosion of energy in the sun appears to have its repercussion upon the earth. There is reason to believe that the secrets of tho earth’s magnetism, and of electr 0 magnetic storms, which have baffled science for many years, lie concealed, in these electric whirls upon the sun, and when the new telescope is ready to study them we shall, beyond any dought, have a grasp of the problem of solar influences upon the earth that may result in the most astonishing practical discoveries concerning the weather.—“P. Science Siftings.”