ROMANCE OF THE HEAVENS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14148, 25 August 1909, Page 5

ROMANCE OF THE HEAVENS.

LECTURE BY PROF. BICKERTON.

" The Romance of the Heavens" was the subject of a lecture delivered by Professor Bickcrton, the well-known New Zealand scientist, at the Y.M.C.A. Hall last evening. It was tho first of a series of lectures to be delivered by Professor Bickerton in this city, and all who had the privilege of hearing him last evening must have gone away with the desire to hear him again. In relating "The Romance of the Heavens" the professor bore out Bis reputation of being a brilliant speaker. He began by dealing with the earth itself. It was, he explained, but a part of a little heavenly colony which, striving to get away into space, was kept revolving in an approximate circle round the sun, which gave it warmth and life. Though the earth seemed so immense to the ordinary individual, it was, however, but a mere speck in the universe. The sun itself was a million times greater than the earth, and there were stars in the heavens which were a million times greater than the sun. "Whenever you think of the sun," he said, " think of him as a twinkling star, and when you think of the stars think of them as suns/' Canopus itself was 1,500,000 times the size of our own sun, and there were millions and millions of suns in the heavens. It was known that there were at least 100,000,000 suns, and Kelvin himself estimated that there were fully 1,000,000,000. Yet so wonderful was the universe that there were also innumerable unseen dark suns, which outnumbered the living ones as the dead do the living inhabitants of the world of to-day. Professor Bickerton then explained that there were two great processions of stars which were passing through each other, and which opened up boundless possibilities to the scientific mind. There were, ho declared, greater things than material discoveries, and those were in lines of thought which enabled men to solve problems, and consequently add to the joys of life. He had grown to believe that we lived in an immortal cosmos, perfect not in its general whole, but in its minutest parts, and the more he studied the more he came to the conclusion that there was a purpose in creation, and that that purpose was the joy of all things. Science would prove the truth of the Sermon on the Mount.

Touching upon his "Theory of the Impact," the professor explained that the innumerable suns sometimes came into contact, grazing each other, and great masses were sent off into space, and thus it was that stars and comets were born. Sometimes stars became wedded together, and went off on their honeymoon, go to speak, and yet kept 100,000,000 miles apart. We had no evidence of a. beginning or the promise of an end. All was infinite and immortal, and the more we inquired into creation tho more we would find that there was no error in the cosmos.

The lecture was punctuated by frequent applause.