IMMENSITY OF SPACE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 16

IMMENSITY OF SPACE

THE BOUNDARY OF THE UNIVERSE.

One of the finest of the spiral nebulae in the heavens is that known as the Great Nebula in Andromeda, which on moonless nights is plainly visible to the naked eye and quite a fine object in a good pair of binoculars. Many attempts, have been made to determine its distance, and a recent- measurement by an American astronomer is reported in "Popular Astronomy." According to this the nebula is probably at least .950,000 light years from the earth—that is, the light from it takeß that enormous period to traverse the' gulf separating us, and light move's at 300,000 kilometres a second. A light year—the distance light moves in one year—is 5,880,348,500,000 miles, so that <the distance of the Andromeda is 5,586,000,000,000,000,000 miles (approximately five and a half trillion). Some years ago a new star appeared in the Andromeda Nebula, which, when brightest, was about the seventh magnitude, too faint to be soen with the naked eye. It remained at the seventhmagnitude only a few days, and then slowly faded" away, being of the sixteenth magnitude, barely visible in the biggest telescopes six months later. But not even the Andromeda Nebula marks, it is believed, the boundary of the universe, if there is a boundary, for by similar 'refined methods a distance of 1,000,000 light years has been calculated for another nebula, which would place it 30,000 billion miles more distant than that in Andromeda.