OUR LITTLE PLANET

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LITTLE PLANET

AND OUR BIG UNIVERSE

(By

Rev. B. Dudley, F.R.A.S.)

It may surprise many readers to learn that the universe we know is, in all probability, a tremendous spiral, with what we call the milky way forming its coiling loops. The reason why it does not appear so to us is because we are within it. If we could look at it as from without and from a long distance, the true nature of the whole would appear. Rather strange, is it not, that our earth, or let us rather say our solar system, happens to be situated -somewhere near the hub of this huge spiral? The stars we see from our position near this centre are all in rapid motion. That is why we speak of them as “so-called fixed stars.” It is known, for instance, that those forming the Southern Cross are moving, and that in the course of m'any thousands of years it will be impossible for people on this earth to recognise the group as a cross at all. Some stars are journeying away from us; some toward us. Others are moving, so to speak, across our path at various angles. Some are travelling together, although they are hundreds or thousands of millions of miles apart. They are companions in flight; “migratory stars,” •as they are called.

Our sun (which i.s a star as truly as is Sirius or any other “fixed” star infinitely beyond the limits of the solar system) is fleeting through space toward a known point in the heavens, taking us with him at the rate of 12J miles a second. One very simple means of testing this lies in the fact that all the stars around that part of the heavens appear to be opening out, while stars on the opposite side of the heavens appear to be.closing in, just as is the case with the scenery in front of and behind one as one travels through the country. Some, stars move together in mighty clusters that are more or less globular in form. The cluster in the constellation of Hercules is an example. This is so vast that a ray of light takes 300 years to cross it. One’s mind refuses to conceive the distance these light-rays have journeyed before entering the camera.

As a matter of fact (an appalling fact, surely), this cluster is so far away that the rays of light which the photographer’s sensitive plate ultimately captured left the cluster 36,000 years ago, or away back in the Ice Age, when a great part of the world was locked in ice. But this prepares the mind for something more astonishing still. Quite recently it has been ascertained that a faint patch of light in the constellation Sagittarius, or the Archer, is a star-system so far away that its light, travelling at the rate of more than 11 million-miles a minute, takes 700,000 years to reach us. It contains millions of giant suns, and many clusters and other wonders. It is known as N.G.C. C 822, which means No. GS22, New General Catalogue. It was lately photographed by a camera attached to the largest telescope in the world. Many astronomers are of the opinion that some of the strange nebulae which look like faint misty patches on the dark sky, and are often spiral in form, are in reality other universes situated at incomprehensible distances from the one to which the solar system belongs.

These are a few of the known facts about the vastness of the universe in which we enjoy our daily round of pleasure. And it does us good to ponder on the facts from time to time. It helps us better to understand our little earth. As a writer in the London DailyNews said many years ago when Halley’s comet was in our skies: “It is only when we come face to face with the stars that we discover our little planet.” We are in a better position to understand our own tiny world for having looked away from it. And certainly we gain a grander idea of the vast scheme of things to which we belong. Professor George Forbes, in his enlightening volume, “The Wonder and the Glory of the Stars,” expresses himself as follows: “When we realise the immense distance that separates us from the nearest edge of the Galaxy, and the inconceivable distance beyond, to which that belt extends; when we realise that all the orbs contained therein are pursuing their courses in periods that are incalculable; we begin to look upon the whole as symbolic of both infinity and eternity. And' when we further realise that the distance we must penetrate to the external coils of our own island universe is as nothing compared to the distance of our nearest island universe neighbour, we have to extend our notions both of infinity and of eternity. And there, on any one of those spiral nebulae, people perhaps see their own celestial sphere, just as we do ours, with their own private sun, their own private'solar system, their own private firmament of stars.” Truly a vast image of immensity is thus opened to our view, unfathomable depths unfolding problems to delight countless generations of astronomers in the centuries to come. One of our poets was overwhelmed in view of the starryhost. I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled. Centuries ago Claudius- Ptolemaeus, the astronomer, -sang (Mackail’s translation being given): “I know that I am mortal and ephemeral; but when I scan the multitudinous circling spirals of the stars, no longer do I touch earth with my feet.” The picture of the celestial vault cries out to be fixed in memory. Even the hard-grained merchant, pausing to gaze upward, has often been compelled to admit that nm«ay is not the only God worships.