STARS IN APPALLING DEPTHS OF SRACE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2473, 7 March 1893, Page 3

STARS IN APPALLING DEPTHS OF SRACE.

In a late lecture to juveniles at the Royal Institution, Sir Robert Ball said : —“ A telegraphic message would go seven times round the earth in a second, and if a telegraphic message could be to the moon it would reach its destination in a little more than a second. _ It would take something like eight minutes to arrive at the sun ; but how long did they think it would take to get to Alpha Centauri travelling thither at 180,000 miles a second ! Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, would not be long enough ; it would take not less than three years travelling all the time at that tremendous pace before it would reach its destination. If that was the case with respect to the nearest of the stars, what must be said of those which were farther off ? There were stars so remote that if the news of the victory of Wellington at Waterloo had been flashed to them in 1815 on that celestial telegraph system it would not have reached them yet, even if the message had sped at the space he had indicated and had been travelling all the time. There were stars so remote that if when William the Conqueror landed here in 10GG the news of his conquest had been dispatched to them, and if the signals flew over the wire at a pace which would carry them seven times round the earth in a single second of time, that news would not have reached them yet. Nay, more, if the glad tidings of that first Christmas in Bethlehem, 19 centuries ago, had thus been disseminated through the universe, there were yet stars of which astronomers could tell them, plunged into space in depths so appalling that even the 1892 years that had elapsed since that event would not have been long enough for the news to reach them, though it travelled at 180,000 miles in every second.”