THE EARTH’S INSIGNIFICANCE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 86, 10 January 1928, Page 15

THE EARTH’S INSIGNIFICANCE

“Recent research still further increases our estimate of tho multiplicity of worlds” (writes Professor J. Arthur Thomson in “John o’ London’s Weekly”). “Everyone is well aware that the earth and the other planets form a system revolving round that parent star which we call the sun; and that the sun is a member of a system of stars—those that we seo clearly on a starry night. But the modern view inclines to the conclusion that there are other systems of stars. For there are many nebulae which are very far away compared with the stars of our system, and each of these nebulae is a vast system of hundreds of millions of stars. These distant nebulae are very numerous (perhaps two millions of them); they nre all somewhat'similar in size; and they are to a considerable extent evenly distributed through space. Tims the astoundin’ picture grows, that the earth is a member of a so’ar system whose central star is one'of many in a vast stellar system', which is in turn one of many other stellar systems!. What is Man? nnd yet again. What is Man not.