WONDERS OF SPACE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2883, 23 June 1909, Page 88

WONDERS OF SPACE.

A JOURNEY TO THE FARTHEST

PLANET.

Until recently Neptune was supposed to lie in the outermost boundary of the solar system ; now we are told that its place has been usurped by two hitherto unknown planets.

One of these is said tc be 45 times and the otner 60 times the distance of the earth from the sun. The outermost planet if therefore twice as far from the sun as the planet Neptune, whose distance is estimated at two billion eight hundred million miles. We- -can scarcely realise what this actually means, says Miss Mary Proctor, unless we make use of a familiar illustration, such as the time which would 'be required for a motor car going 60 miles an hour to cover this stupendous distance.

Let us imagine a broad, level road reaching from th,e sun to the outermost planet Neptune, and the car proceeding in that direction at an average speed of a mile a minute without stopping, night and day," until it reached our planet earth. By this time 175 years would have elapsed. Continuing on its way to Neptune, it would not reach its destination until 5250 years later.

Though the occupants of the car, hoary with age, would long since have passed the allotted span of man's life on earth, yet we can imagine them urging the chauffeur to continue the journey still further to the planet which is some 45 times the distance of the sun from the earth.

Putting on full speed, the car plunges onward, the record on arrival at the planet being 7875 years. A- final spurt enables the chauffeur to cover the distance separating- his party from the outermost planet of all, and we can imagine the car finally landing on the outermost planet, some 10,500 years having elapsed since the car started from the sun.

On arrival at the planet the travellers would find the merest glimmer of light from the sun, now some five billion five hundred and eighty million miles distant, and a corresponding chilliness, compared with which the cold of our Arctic regions would be warm., This we argue from the fact that from Neptune, which is only onehalf the distance of the new planet from the sun, the'disc of the sun is only about one-hundredth of ours in apparent size, and in consequence the olar light and heat received by this planet are greatly diminished.

Whether the two new planets are inhabited worlds is one of the problems to be ranked with the so-called canals ot Mars and other theories regarding the solar system, which have co far taxed the ingenuity of astronomers. Meanwhile we await with interest further news of the newly-discovered realms in the solar system and wonder what the future will reveal as to their peculiar characteristics.