Curiosities of the Sky, Garrett Putman Serviss [free novel reading sites txt] 📗

its masters of life were the monstrous beasts of the ``Age of Reptiles''? A million years is not much of a span of time in geologic reckoning, yet a million years ago the earth was farther from its present place in space than any of the stars with a measurable parallax are now. It was more than seven times as far as Sirius, nearly fourteen times as far as Alpha Centauri, three times as far as Vega, and twice as far as Arcturus. But some geologists demand two hundred, three hundred, even one thousand million years to enable them to account for the evolutionary development of the earth and its inhabitants. In a thousand million years the earth would have traveled farther than from the remotest conceivable depths of the Milky Way!

Other curious reflections arise when we think of the form of the earth's track as it follows the lead of the sun, in a journey which has neither known beginning nor conceivable end. There are probably many minds which have found a kind of consolation in the thought that every year the globe returns to the same place, on the same side of the sun. This idea may have an occult connection with our traditional regard for anniversaries. When that period of the year returns at which any great event in our lives has occurred we have the feeling that the earth, in its annual round, has, in a manner, brought us back to the scene of that event. We think of the earth's orbit as a well-worn path which we traverse many times in the course of a lifetime. It seems familiar to us, and we grow to have a sort of attachment to it. The sun we are accustomed to regard as a fixed center in space, like the mill or pump around which the harnessed patient mule makes his endless circuits. But the real fact is that the earth never returns to the place in space where it has once quitted. In consequence of the motion of the sun carrying the earth and the other planets along, the track pursued by our globe is a vast spiral in space continually developing and never returning upon its course. It is probable that the tracks of the sun and the others stars are also irregular, and possibly spiral, although, as far as can be at present determined, they appear to be practically straight. Every star, wherever it may be situated, is attracted by its fellow-stars from many sides at once, and although the force is minimized by distance, yet in the course of many ages its effects must become manifest.

Looked at from another side, is there not something immensely stimulating and pleasing to the imagination in the idea of so stupendous a journey, which makes all of us the greatest of travelers? In the course of a long life a man is transported through space thirty thousand million miles; Halley's Comet does not travel one-quarter as far in making one of its immense circuits. And there are adventures on this voyage of which we are just beginning to learn to take account. Space is full of strange things, and the earth must encounter some of them as it advances through the unknown. Many singular speculations have been indulged in by astronomers concerning the possible effects upon the earth of the varying state of the space that it traverses. Even the alternation of hot and glacial periods has sometimes been ascribed to this source. When tropical life flourished around the poles, as the remains in the rocks assure us, the needed high temperature may, it has been thought, have been derived from the presence of the earth in a warm region of space. Then, too, there is a certain interest for us in the thought of what our familiar planet has passed through. We cannot but admire it for its long journeying as we admire the traveler who comes to us from remote and unexplored lands, or as we gaze with a glow of interest upon the first locomotive that has crossed a continent, or a ship that has visited the Arctic or Antarctic regions. If we may trust the indications of the present course, the earth, piloted by the sun, has come from the Milky Way in the far south and may eventually rejoin that mighty band of stars in the far north.

While the stars in general appear to travel independently of one another, except when they are combined in binary or trinary systems, there are notable exceptions to this rule. In some quarters of the sky we behold veritable migrations of entire groups of stars whose members are too widely separated to show any indications of revolution about a common center of gravity. This leads us back again to the wonderful group of the Pleiades. All of the principle stars composing that group are traveling in virtually parallel lines. Whatever force set them going evidently acted upon all alike. This might be explained by the assumption that when the original projective force acted upon them they were more closely united than they are at present, and that in drifting apart they have not lost the impulse of the primal motion. Or it may be supposed that they are carried along by some current in space, although it would be exceedingly difficult, in the present state of our knowledge, to explain the nature of such a current. Yet the theory of a current has been proposed. As to an attractive center around which they might revolve, none has been found. Another instance of similar ``star-drift'' is furnished by five of the seven stars constituting the figure of the ``Great Dipper.'' In this case the stars concerned are separated very widely, the two extreme ones by not less than fifteen degrees, so that the idea of a common motion would never have been suggested by their aspect in the sky; and the case becomes the more remarkable from the fact that among and between them there are other stars, some of the same magnitude, which do not share their motion, but are traveling in other directions. Still other examples of the same phenomenon are found in other parts of the sky. Of course, in the case of compact star-clusters, it is assumed that all the members share a like motion of translation through space, and the same is probably true of dense star-swarms and star-clouds.

The whole question of star-drift has lately assumed a new phase, in consequence of the investigations of Kapteyn, Dyson, and Eddington on the ``systematic motions of the stars.'' This research will, it is hoped, lead to an understanding of the general law governing the movements of the whole body of stars constituting the visible universe. Taking about eleven hundred stars whose proper motions have been ascertained with an approach to certainty, and which are distributed in all parts of the sky, it has been shown that there exists an apparent double drift, in two independent streams, moving in different and nearly opposed directions. The apex of the motion of what is called ``Stream I'' is situated, according to Professor Kapteyn, in right ascension 85°, declination south 11°, which places it just south of the constellation Orion; while the apex of ``Stream II'' is in right ascension 260°, declination south 48°, placing it in the constellation Ara, south of Scorpio. The two apices differ very nearly 180° in right ascension and about 120° in declination. The discovery of these vast star-streams, if they really exist, is one of the most extraordinary in modern astronomy. It offers the correlation of stellar movements needed as the basis of a theory of those movements, but it seems far from revealing a physical cause for them. As projected against the celestial sphere the stars forming the two opposite streams appear intermingled, some obeying one tendency and some the other. As Professor Dyson has said, the hypothesis of this double movement is of a revolutionary character, and calls for further investigation. Indeed, it seems at first glance not less surprising than would be the observation that in a snow-storm the flakes over our heads were divided into two parties and driving across each other's course in nearly opposite directions, as if urged by interpenetrating winds.

But whatever explanation may eventually be found for the motions of the stars, the knowledge of the existence of those motions must always afford a new charm to the contemplative observer of the heavens, for they impart a sense of life to the starry system that would otherwise be lacking. A stagnant universe, with every star fixed immovably in its place, would not content the imagination or satisfy our longing for ceaseless activity. The majestic grandeur of the evolutions of the celestial hosts, the inconceivable vastness of the fields of space in which they are executed, the countless numbers, the immeasurable distances, the involved convolutions, the flocking and the scattering, the interpenetrating marches and countermarches, the strange community of impulsion affecting stars that are wide apart in space and causing them to traverse the general movement about them like aides and despatch-bearers on a battle-field -- all these arouse an intensity of interest which is heightened by the mystery behind them.