Worlds in Star Land.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 6047, 12 September 1894, Page 3

Worlds in Star Land.

Sir Robert Ball, Astronomer Royal of England, recently delivered a lecture on the" I subject "The Other Worlds in Star Land" to a juvenile audience in the theatre of the Royal Dublin Society. In the course of his address he said : Were an electric wire wrapped seven or eight times as a girdle round this globe the current would accomplish seven or eight circuits in the interval between two ticks of the pendulum of a clock. But now let us suppose that a telegraphic system is about to be instituted throughout the universe ; let wires radiate from this earth, not alone to America or China, but let us imagine a wire from the earth to the moon, from the earth to the sun, and from the earth to some of the stars. The moon is still so near us that the telegraphic message to our satellite would seem to pass almost instantaneously ; it would not require much more than s, single second of time. To the sun, however, the delay would be somewhat greater ; in fact, you would have to wait nearly eight minutes. A message could not be sent to the sun and an answer received back in less than a quarter of an hour, in addition to delays of the ordinary kind. But now suppose that we are to send a message to one of the nearest of the stars.

As the telegraph clerk made the signal it would speed along the celestial wire at the frightful pace of 200,0C0 miles a second ; but yet such is the journey that minutes and hours, aye, and even days and weeks will pass over and the message has not reached the goal. The weeks run into months, the months spread into a year, but two years, nay, even three years will be necessary beiore that signal arrives at its destination. Such would be the problem of telegraphing to the nearest star. But there are stars in the sky to which the telegraph, travelling with this almost inconceivable speed, could not convey its message until after a lapse of 50 years and of 100 years. There are stars so distant that were a telegraphic mesfage sent to them at the time when William the Conqueror landed —BOO years ago—the message would not have yet arrived. There are stars so distant that if the glad tidings of that first Christmas at Bethlehem, 1890 years ago, had been wired off at the time, the message would still be on its way. There are stars so distant that, had the first man that ever set foot on this globe despatched a telegraphic message to announce his advent, the intelligence would not have yet reached its destination. There are certainly stars shining in the heaven above us so distant that that much-vaunted telegram would require 1,000,000 years to communicate with them. Do you hesitate to accept these facts that I have described 1 Then know that the astronomers on whose authority they are based are those who have devoted their lives to the study of the stars, and they have only had one object in the pursuit they have followed, and that is the discovery of the truth.