IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE?

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 24, Issue 16, 28 February 1913, Page 2

IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE?

A COMMON-SENSE VIEW. Kant, that grumbling genius, who found it horribly monotonous to see the same sun shining every year and Spring always returning at the tame time, lost himself in metaphysical speculations trying to prove that the infinite space is everywhere filled with similar stars. It is, said Professor Charles Nordmann, in a recent paper, perhaps prudent to examine this problem only in the light of recent reliable observations, carefully leaving out all confusing metaphysical thoughts which may force us to define what -,ve call space and end by making us confess that we know nothing, hot even that it actually exists. Using, therefore, only common> sense, we will begin by admitting that an infinite space really exists. Is the number of stars un'dmited ? There are those, the Professor points out, who deny this a priori, reasoning in this manner : No matter what the number of stars is, it may always be added to. It te, therefore, not 'infinite, since nothing may be added to the infinite. The' argument is plausible, but It is false, though Voltaire was taken in by it. One does not need to be a doctor of mathematics to know that one may al . ays add to an Infinite number, and th it Ui to exist infinite numbers that are infinitely small compared to others. If the v, orld of stars were endless, there would not be a single line of sight from tbs earth which would not meet one of the stars. The astronomer, Olbers, has remarked that the mighty sky would then be of a brilliancy comparable to that of the sun. Now the total brilliancy of all the stars taken together is barely three thousanl times greater than that of a star of the first magnitude ; that is to say, thirty million times less than that of the sun. Because of this it was once thought that it could be proved that the number of stars was limited'. But one forgot to remember that Giber’s argument proves nothing for two r a ons, v, hi h Professor Nodmann gives. First, there are necessarily in the sky many extinct and obscure stars ; we know a number of them which have been carefully studied and which pi ore their existence by eclipsing space in manplaces is filled with dark nebulous masses and clouds of a cosmic dust whi h absorb the light of more distant stars. It is easily seen, therefore, that an infinite number of brilliant stars is perfectly compatible with the faint brightness of the nocturnal sky. /

And now, in the Professor’s words, if we adjust our spectacles—or rather, our telescopes—and pass from the domains of the rossi’Te to those of the real, the o’ ser a'ions made during recent yea r s with the most jio erful instnu.-n’s supply us with a certain number of facts vhich are quite remarkable, an I which irresistibly lead to the following conclusions :

The number of vi-;ible stars is by no means, as we lave long used to believe, limited only by the power of our visual or photographic telescopes. As we go away from the sun the number of stars contained in the unit of volume—the "frequency of the stars”—docs not remain uniform, but diminishes as we grow closer to the limits of the imm:n - e ant-hill of stars, which we call the Milky Way. Our sun seems placed in the central regions of this heap, which is rudely shaped like a watch case which seems to be about half as wide as it is long. Light, the speed of which being 300,000 kilometres a second permits it to run around the earth at the equator in in one-eighth of a second, takes 250 centuries to traverse this space. The number of stars in the Milky Way seems to be between five hundred millions and one milliard—a thousand millions. This is a very small number, far smaller than the number of iron molecules contained in a pin-head. Outside the limits of the Milky Way space seems deserted and devoid of stars for enormous distances, compared to the extent of the ' Milky Way group of stars. If there are, very much further away, other universes, we cannot know anything about them, for they are isolated from our optical point of view, perhaps by the phenomena of cosmic absorption.

Dare we hope, asks Professor Nordmann, that some day perfect means of observation will permit us to cross the silent abysses which surround our Milky Way Cosmos? Or are our views' perhaps prisoners forever in this giant monade ? Probably the latter is true because of the ether. “I do not speak of the ether of the druggists, which is sold in bottles and beloved by certain ladies, nor of the ether of the poets, which is so vague that no one really knows what it is. No, I speak of the ether of the scientists, of that imponderable and marvellously elastic medium which fills the space between the planets, and which is more precious than the air we breathe, since it transmits the light and heat vibrations of the sun, the source and torch of all life on earth.”

Now, according to the most recent discoveries of science, concludes our great authority, ether and matter seem more and more to be modified forms of one another. Nothing proves that the two forms of substance are not always associated and found together. And perhaps the Milky Way, the local concentration of matter, is nothing but a bubble of isolated ‘ ether. If this be so, if around our universe there be spaces devoid

or ettier, It will l>e forever impossible for even the faintest ray of light, the smallest quantity of energy to come to us from v;oriels which perhaps live and hr, aihe beycn i, ( and these worlds sbrU forever be for ( us as if they did not m.u-.t at a'l. ‘"Hiere arc then, things we are never to know,” cry the astonish d simpletons. "A pleasant pretension, to want everything in existence to be contained in a few cubic indies of grey matter.”— '’Popular Science Sittings.”