AMAZING UNIVERSE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19302, 1 October 1932, Page 2

AMAZING UNIVERSE

“TIME IS THE ONLY CONSTANT/’ Writing in the London “Daily Telegraph,” Wade Chance states: — 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 100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson, California, at the other end of the scale is the minute instrument called the Thermo couple, 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 tells us that a star of the sixth magnitude, barely visible to the eye. raises the temperature on the earth by or.chalf of one-billionth of a degree. 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 infinitesimal current, as tested at Yale University. What do the swings of its needle tell us of the heat of the stars? It shows the temperature of a very blue or hot star to be as high as 41.000 deg. Fahrenheit, down to 2,800 deg. for variable stars. It proves tne moon to have such wide variations of temperature from as low as liquid air during the lunar night of fourteen 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. jas a temperature of SOOdeg Fahrenheit, enough to melt metals. The clouds which habitually conceal Venus— Venus has never been seen—have shown 9deg below zero. Jupiter, formerly suposed to be a sort of planetary sun. and still molten, shows a surface temperature of 216 deg. due tc its great distance from the sun. Although Mars through a large telescope looks the size of a sixpence, the Thermocouple has measured its Jeraerature at its equator at the pores and in the temperate zone. When nearest the sun Mars has a temperature of 60 deg. There is no subject, save that of a future life, on which the speculative mind dwells with interest equal to the true nature of the universe aroui d us. Are other planets inhabited? This is the commonest query in this field. In 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 beings existing in conditions of excessive heat or frigid cola, could only seem monsters to us. The unformity and continuity of the human type as we know it after a mil - lion years’ existence on the earth would argue the Creator’s approval of a finished product, which, quite possibly, is the universal pattern. We do know that the elements found in the sun and in other stars 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 d' tances from the 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 rea-

sonably be supposed., that there are hundreds of millions of inhabited, or habitable, planets, throughout the universe.

Neptune, until recently, was supposed to be the outside limit of the solar system. Life, as we undrstand it, could not possibly exist on Neptune, which receives 900 times less light from the sun than does the earth. Wt*it then must be conditions on Pluto, the latest addition to our solar system, more distant even then Neptune? Pluto at aphelion, or farthest point from the sun. is 4,620.000 - 000 miles distanct. Or. measured by the speed of light, it takes but eight minutes for light to travel from the 'un to the earth, and to Pluto, seven hours—fifty-two times as long. Actually, compared with the four lightyears’ distance of the nearest star—or sun —from the earth, Pluto is merely a chicken wandering from its mother'*: wings, such is the 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 2.500 times less light than the earth, and its tem - perature is 459 degrees below zero. No, Pluto, is no more habitable than Mercury, with its heat. It has no atmosphere, its sky is dark, and the sun shines thereon merely as a star. It is, like most, if not al. of the other planets, merely scrap left over in the process of creating conditions for human life on the earth we inhabit. Speaking for the first time over the cold ray of a harnessed moonbeam, a prominent New York business man from the sixty-seventh floor of the new Sixty Wall-street Tower, lately greeted his corporation’s employees throughout the United States and the officers and crev/s of the company's vessels at sea Then over the moonbeams he blew his little whistle caus ing the floodlights to shine on the new building. Even though man should survive on earth for another million years, he will never know of other habitable Worlds outside our own solar system. Nor will untold billions of intelligent creatures presumably existing in the universe ever know us, through out eternity—not, at least, on the material plane. Study of the universe reveals all-pervading, immutable, omnipresent, unchangeable law.

Time is the only constant, and through all time, in infinite space, works the great immense mind of Jove, through the infinitely small to the infinitely vast. Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.