DISSECTING STARS

Hokitika Guardian, 22 May 1933, Page 3

DISSECTING STARS

SIR J. JEANS AS CONJUROR

Weird things happened at the Royal Institute recently, when Sir Janies Jeans delivered the second of his series of lectures on modern astronomy. At one moment the lecture theatre was flooded with a strange orangeyellow light which made the thronged rows of races look ghostly-hued- and eerie The spectre-like figures shaded their eyes with their hands. But with this light Sir James illustrated the absorption of light by atoms, and he evoked a burst of far from ghostly applause by producing a blackedged Uame which looked like a sheet of mourning note-paper made of fne. Then the frightening whirring noise of a beihoarer —an instrument which was whirled round by Australian aborigines to tet'rify their: (enemiesrang through the hall to illustrate a point about sound waves. With wonderful pictures Sir James gave a close-up view of the sun and the stars—in fact, he dissected them. Those sun “spots” for instance, are vent holes through which gas pours, and most of them are big enough to drop our earth in and lose it. “The ‘densities’ of some stars,” he said, “mav be only about one-millionth of oilr ordinary air, hut the density of 'Other stars is fifty thousand times the density of water.' Of the latter you could put, a ton in your waistcoat pocket or the howl of your one but a ton of the' former would fill Waterloo Station.” ” .