OUR AMAZING UNIVERSE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17909, 13 October 1932, Page 4

OUR AMAZING UNIVERSE

WONDERFUL INSTRUMENT MEASURING- STARS 630 TIMES FAINTER THAN THE NAKED EYE CAN SEE (By Wade Chance, in London Daily Telegraph) In the contemplation of the universe, even more fascinating than the marvels of the infinitely great is the study of the infinitely small. Possibly as amazing as the lOOiri. telescope at Mount Wilson, California, at the other end of the scale is the minute instrument called the Thermocouple, a recent invention to measure the light and heat of the stars. It weighs about one-thousand times less than a drop of water, or about one-600th of a grain, yet it can detect the light of a candle 100 miles away provided there is no atmospheric interference. It has detected the light of a candle across a lake at Madison, Wisconsin. It has performed the astonishing feat of measuring the heat of a thirteenth magnitude star, which is 630; times fainter than the faintest star visible to the naked eye. It fells us that a star oT the sixth magnitude, barely visible to the eye, raises the temperature on the earth by one half of one-billionth of a degree. HEAT OF THE STARS Its construction is simple—two strips of metal, like tin and bismuth, welded together, mounted in a glass vacuum tube, with a window of rock salt through which the light passes. It takes less than three-billionths of a second to generate an infilnitesimal current, as tested at Yale University. What do the swings of its needle tell us of tho heat of the stars? It shows the temperature of a very blue or hot star to be as high as 41,000 degrees Fahrenheit, down to 2800 degrees for variable stars. It proves tho moon to have wide variations of temperature from as low as liquid air during tho lunar night of 14 days, to as high as boiling water when the sun rises to its zenith. It is the absence of atmosphere which permits these variations. The planets of our solar system show an enormous variety in temperature. Mercury, nearest the sun, has a temperature of BCO degrees Fahrenheit, enough to melt metals. .The clouds which habitually conceal Venus —Venus has never been seen—have shown. 9 degrees below zero. Jupiter, formerly supposed to be a sort of planetary sun, and still molten, shows a surface temperature of 216 degrees, due to its great distance from the sun. Although Mars through a largo telescope looks the size of a sixpence, the Thermocouple has measured its temperature at its equator at the poles and in tho temperate zone. When nearest tho sun Mars has a temperature of 60 degrees. UNINHABITED PLANETS There is no subject, save that of a future life, on which the speculative mind dwells with interest equal to the true nature o? the universe around us. Are other planets inhabited? This is the commonest query in this field. Iu our solar system, probably none, excepting possibly Mars. On the earth only all conditions for human habitation seem to have been united in miraculous fashion, and are absent on other planets—-proper distance from the sun, the time of transit around the sun which establishes the length of our year, and which again regulates the seasons, and the age of the earth'with its ensuing geologic development. Mercury is too close to the sun, and the outer planets, still largely in a molten state, are too distant from the sun for a proper heat supply, and their transit around the sun takes far too long. Animate Jieings existing in conditions of excessive heat or frigid cold, could only seem monsters to us. The uniformity and continuity of the human type as we know it after a million years’ existence on tho earth would argue the Creator’s approval of a finished product, which, quite possibly, is tho universal pattern. We do know that the elements found in the sun and in other star's are identical with those of the earth. BILLIONS OF SUNS Coming to possible existing planets outside our solar system, no telescope can ever be devised by man to reveal them to us, for they can exist only as satellites of the billions of suns in the universe, all at such colossal distances from tho earth that their faint light, merely reflected radiance from their respective suns, can never reach us. If we estimate one inhabited planet to each sun of any magnitude, it would be excessive, but it can reasonably be supposed that there are hundreds of millions of inhabited, or habitable, planets throughout tho universe. Neptune, until recently, was supposed to be the outside limit of tho solar system. Life, as we understand it, could not possibly exist on Neptune, which receives 900 times less light from the sun than does the earth." What then must bo conditions on Pluto, the latest addition to our solar system, more distant even than Neptune? Pluto at aphelion, or farthest point from the sun, is 4,620,000,000 miles distant. Or, measured by the speed of light, it takes but eight minutes for light to travel from tho sun to the earth, and to Pluto, seven hours —52 times as long. Actually, compared with the four light-years’ distance of the nearest star —or sun—from the earth, Pluto is merely a chicken wandering from its mother’s wings, such is tho great isolation of the solar system in the universe. Our system is a fairly compact little family, and a lonely one. Pluto’s journey around the sun takes 250 years, longer than the United States has been in existence. During aphelion it receives 2500 times less light than tho earth, and its temperature is 459 degrees below zero. No, Pluto, is no more habitable than Mercury, with its heat. It has no atmosphete, its sky is dark, and tho sun shines thereon merely as a star. It is, like most, if not all, of the other planets, merely scrap left over in the process of creating conditions for human life on the earth wo inhabit.

'Speaking for the first time over tho cold .ray of a harnessed moonbeam, a prominent New York business man from tlio sixty-seventh floor of the now Sixty Wall-street Tower, lately greeted his corporation’s employees throughout the United States and the officers and crews of the company’s vessels at sea. Then over the moonbeams he blew his littlo whistle, causing the floodlights to shino on the now building. TIME THE ONLY CONSTANT Even though man should survive on earth for anothor million years, ho will