About the Universe.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 26, Issue 64, 6 August 1915, Page 2

About the Universe.

To form some idea of the largei ness of the earth one may look ii{on Iho landscape from the top :of an ordinary church steeple, and then hear in mind t'ui ! one must . vimv 900, opt) similar landscapes to : get- an approximately correct idea lof lhe size of rho earth. | Place duo earths like ours side |hy side, yet. Saturn's outermost : ring could easily enclose them. .Three hundred thousand earth globes co 11 he stored inside the sun, if hollow. i If a human eye every hour were ca, aide of looking upon a. fresh measure of world material 5,100 square miles large, that eye would need 55,0tt0 years to overlook the surface of the sun. To reach the nearest fixed star one must travel 20,500,000,000 , miles, and i! the velocity were equal to that, nf a cannon-ball it would require 5, OO", 000 years to travel that avUr.ce. Besides single stars, we l;n •}»’ of systemr of stars moving round one mother, f--i ill, we mv ■ut a t. »»v into spare, ns yet. Out,vide our lin-ts of > i-.ion a-“ imagination- there are, no still larger spaces. The Mu!-" Way holds at Last 20,191,000 st- a, and, as each i" a sun, we presume it is encird.'d by at le ..t Ilf tv planets. Counting up ther,- figures v.e arrive at the magnitude of 1,000,955,000 starc—a thousand million stars ! Who can comprehend it ? Yet this is only . a port of the universe. The modern, telescopes have discovered more and similar Milky Ways still farther away. We know of some 3,000 nebulae which represent Milky Ways like ours, Let us count 2,000 of them ns being of the size of our Milk'- Way ; then 2,000 by 20,191,000 equals 40,382,000,000'5un5, or 2,019,100,000,000 heavenly bodies'. |