Marvels of Modern Science Part 11

But the picture taking power of the finest photographic lens has a limit; no matter how long the exposure, it cannot penetrate beyond a certain boundary into the vastness of s.p.a.ce, and beyond its limits as George Sterling, the Californian poet, says are--

"fires of unrecorded suns That light a heaven not our own."

What is the limit? Answer philosopher, answer sage, answer astronomer, and we have the solution of "the riddle of the Universe."

As yet the riddle still remains, the veil still hangs between the knowable and the unknowable, between the finite and the infinite.

Science stands baffled like a wailing creature outside the walls of knowledge importuning for admission. There is little, in truth no hope at all, that she will ever be allowed to enter, survey all the fields of s.p.a.ce and set a limit to their boundaries.

Although the riddle of the universe still remains unsolved because unsolvable, no one can deny that Astronomy has made mighty strides forward during the past few years. What has been termed the "Old Astronomy," which concerns itself with the determination of the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies, has been rejuvenated and an immense amount of work has been accomplished by concerted effort, as well as by individual exertions.

The greatest achievements have been the accurate determination of the positions of the fixed stars visible to the eye. Their situation is now estimated with as unerring precision as is that of the planets of our own system. Millions upon millions of stars have been photographed and these photographs will be invaluable in determining the future changes and motions of these giant suns of interstellar s.p.a.ce.

Of our own system we now know definitely the laws governing it. Fifty years ago much of our solar machinery was misunderstood and many things were enveloped in mystery which since has been made very plain. The spectroscope has had a wonderful part in astronomical research. It first revealed the nature of the gases existing in the sun. It next enabled us to study the prominences on any clear day. Then by using it in the spectro-heliograph we have been enabled to photograph the entire visible surface of the sun, together with the prominences at one time. Through the spectro-heliograph we know much more about what the central body of our system is doing than our theories can explain.

Fresh observations are continually bringing to light new facts which must soon be accounted for by laws at present unknown.

Spectroscopic observations are by no means confined to the sun. By them we now study the composition of the atmospheres of the other planets; through them the presence of chemical elements known on the earth is detected in vagrant comets, far-distant stars and dimly-s.h.i.+ning nebulae. The spectroscope also makes it possible to measure the velocities of objects which are approaching or receding from us. For instance we know positively that the bright star called Aldebaran near the constellation of the Pleiades is retreating from us at a rate of almost two thousand miles a minute. The greatest telescopes in the world are now being trained on stars that are rus.h.i.+ng away towards the "furthermost" of s.p.a.ce and in this way astronomers are trying to get definite knowledge as to the actual velocity with which the celestial bodies are speeding.

It is only within the past few years that photography has been applied to astronomical development. In this connection, more accurate results are obtained by measuring the photographs of stellar spectra than by measuring the spectra themselves. Photography with modern rapid plates gives us, with a given telescope, pictures of objects so faint that no visual telescope of the same size will reveal them. It is in this way that many of the invisible stars have impressed themselves upon exposed plates and given us a vague idea of the immensity in number of those stars which we cannot view with eye or instrument.

Though we have made great advancement, there are many problems yet even in regard to our own little system of sun worlds which clamor loudly for solution. The sun himself represents a crowd of pending problems. His peculiar mode of rotation; the level of sunspots; the const.i.tution of the photospheric cloud-sh.e.l.l, its relation to faculae which rise from it, and to the surmounting vaporous strata; the nature of the prominences; the alternations of coronal types; the affinities of the zodiacal light--all await investigation.

A great telescope has recently shown that one star in eighteen on the average is a visual double--is composed of two suns in slow revolution around their common center of ma.s.s. The spectroscope using the photographic plate, has established within the last decade that one star in every five or six on the average is attended by a companion so near to it as to remain invisible in the most powerful telescopes, and so ma.s.sive as to swing the visible star around in an elliptic orbit.

The photography of comets, nebulae and solar coronas has made the study of these phenomena incomparably more effective than the old visual methods. There is no longer any necessity to make "drawings" of them.

The old dread of comets has been relegated into the shade of ignorance.

The long switching tails regarded so ominously and from which were antic.i.p.ated such dire calamities as the destruction of worlds into chaos have been proven to be composed of gaseous vapors of no more solidity than the "airy nothingness of dreams."

The earth in the circle of its...o...b..t pa.s.sed through the tail of Halley's comet in May, 1910, and we hadn't even a pyrotechnical display of fire rockets to celebrate the occasion. In fact there was not a single celestial indication of the pa.s.sage and we would not have known only for the calculations of the astronomer. The pa.s.sing of a comet now, as far as fear is concerned, means no more, in fact not as much, as the pa.s.sing of an automobile.

Science no doubt has made wonderful strides in our time, but far as it has gone, it has but opened for us the first few pages of the book of the heavens--the last pages of which no man shall ever read. For aeons upon aeons of time, worlds and suns, and systems of worlds and suns, revolved through the infinity of s.p.a.ce, before man made his appearance on the tiny molecule of matter we call the earth, and for aeons upon aeons, for eternity upon eternity, worlds and suns shall continue to roll and revolve after the last vestige of man shall have disappeared, nay after the atoms of earth and sun and all his attending planets of our system shall have amalgamated themselves with other systems in the boundlessness of s.p.a.ce; destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, they shall never be, for matter is indestructible. When it pa.s.ses from one form it enters another; the dead animal that is cast into the earth lives again in the trees and shrubs and flowers and gra.s.ses that grow in the earth above where its body was cast. Our earth shall die in course of time, that is, its particles will pa.s.s into other compositions and it will be so of the other planets, of the suns, of the stars themselves, for as soon as the old ones die there will ever be new forms to which to attach themselves and thus the process of world development shall go on forever.

The nebulae which astronomers discover throughout the stellar s.p.a.ce are extended ma.s.ses of glowing gases of different forms and are worlds in process of formation. Such was the earth once. These gases solidify and contract and cool off until finally an inhabited world, inhabited by some kind of creatures, takes its place in the whirling galaxy of systems.

The stars which appear to us in a yellow or whitish yellow light are in the heyday of their existence, while those that present a red haze are almost burnt out and will soon become blackened, dead things disintegrating and crumbling and spreading their particles throughout s.p.a.ce. It is supposed this little earth of ours has a few more million years to live, so we need not fear for our personal safety while in mortal form.

To us ordinary mortals the mystery as well as the majesty of the heavens have the same wonderful attraction as they had for the first of our race. Thousands of years ago the black-bearded shepherds of Eastern lands gazed nightly into the vaulted dome and were struck with awe as well as wonder in the contemplation of the glittering specks which appeared no larger than the pebbles beneath their feet.

We in our time as we gaze with unaided eye up at the mighty disk of the so called Milky Way, no longer regard the scintillating points glittering like diamonds in a jeweler's show-case, with feelings of awe, but the wonder is still upon us, wonder at the immensity of the works of Him who built the earth and sky, who, "throned in height sublime, sits amid the cherubim," King of the Universe, King of kings and Lord of lords. With a deep faith we look up and adore, then reverently exclaim,--"Lord, G.o.d! wonderful are the works of Thy Hands."

CHAPTER XVI

CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WORLDS?

Vastness of Nature--Star Distances--Problem of Communicating with Mars--The Great Beyond.

A story is told of a young lady who had just graduated from boarding school with high honors. Coming home in great glee, she cast her books aside as she announced to her friends;--"Thank goodness it is all over, I have nothing more to learn. I know Latin and Greek, French and German, Spanish and Italian; I have gone through Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Conic Sections and the Calculus; I can interpret Beethoven and Wagner, and--but why enumerate?--in short, '_I know everything_.'"

As she was thus proclaiming her knowledge her h.o.a.ry-headed grandfather, a man whom the Universities of the world had honored by affixing a score of alphabetical letters to his name, was experimenting in his laboratory. The lines of long and deep study had corrugated his brow and furrowed his face. Wearily he bent over his retorts and test tubes.

At length he turned away with a heavy sigh, threw up his hands and despairingly exclaimed,--"Alas, alas! after fifty years of study and investigation, I find _I know nothing_."

There is a moral in this story that he who runs may read. Most of us are like the young lady,--in the pride of our ignorance, we fancy we know almost everything. We boast of the progress of our time, of what has been accomplished in our modern world, we proclaim our triumphs from the hilltops,--"Ha!" we shout, "we have annihilated time and distance; we have conquered the forces of nature and made them subservient to our will; we have chained the lightning and imprisoned the thunder; we have wandered through the fields of s.p.a.ce and measured the dimensions and revolutions of stars and suns and planets and systems. We have opened the eternal gates of knowledge for all to enter and crowned man king of the universe."

Vain boasting! The gates of knowledge have been opened, but we have merely got a peep at what lies within. And man, so far from being king of the universe, is but as a speck on the fly-wheel that controls the mighty machinery of creation. What we know is infinitesimal to what we do not know. We have delved in the fields of science, but as yet our ploughshares have merely scratched the tiniest portion of the surface,--the furrow that lies in the distance is unending. In the infinite book of knowledge we have just turned over a few of the first pages; but as it is infinite, alas! we can never hope to reach the final page, for there is no final page. What we have accomplished is but as a mere drop in the ocean, whose waves wash the continents of eternity. No scholar, no scientist can bound those continents, can tell the limits to which they stretch, inasmuch as they are illimitable.

Ask the most learned _savant_ if he can fix the boundaries of s.p.a.ce, and he will answer,--No! Ask him if he can define _mind_ and _matter_, and you will receive the same answer.

"What is mind? It is no matter."

"What is matter? Never mind."

The atom formerly thought to be indivisible and the smallest particle of matter has been reduced to molecules, corpuscles, ions, and electrons; but the nature, the primal cause of these, the greatest scientists on earth are unable to determine. Learning is as helpless as ignorance when brought up against this stone-wall of mystery.

_The effect_ is seen, but the _cause_ remains indeterminable. The scientist, gray-haired in experience and experiment, knows no more in this regard than the prattling child at its mother's knee. The child asks,--"Who made the world?" and the mother answers, "G.o.d made the world." The infant mind, suggestive of the future craving for knowledge, immediately asks,--"Who is G.o.d?" Question of questions to which the philosopher and the peasant must give the same answer,--"G.o.d is the infinite, the eternal, the source of all things, the _alpha_ and _omega_ of creation, from Him all came, to Him all must return."

He is the beginning of Science, the foundation on which our edifice of knowledge rests.

We hear of the conflict between Science and Religion. There is no conflict, can be none, for all Science must be based on faith,--faith in Him who holds worlds and suns "in the hollow of His hand." All our great scientists have been deeply religious men, acknowledging their own insignificance before Him who fills the universe with His presence.

What is the universe and what place do we hold in it? The mind of man becomes appalled in consideration of the question. The orb we know as the sun is centre of a system of worlds of which our earth is almost the most insignificant; yet great as is the sun when compared to the little bit of matter on which we dwell and have our being, it is itself but a mote, as it were, in the beam of the Universe. Formerly this sun was thought to be fixed and immovable, but the progress of science demonstrated that while the earth moves around this luminary, the latter is moving with mighty velocity in an orbit of its own. Tis the same with all the other bodies which we erroneously call "fixed stars."

These stars are the suns of other systems of worlds, countless systems, all rus.h.i.+ng through the immensity of s.p.a.ce, for there is nothing fixed or stationary in creation,--all is movement, constant, unvarying. Suns and stars and systems perform their revolutions with unerring precision, each unit-world true to its own course, thus proving to the soul of reason and the consciousness of faith that there must needs be an omnipotent hand at the lever of this grand machinery of the universe, the hand that fas.h.i.+oned it, that of G.o.d. Addison beautifully expresses the idea in referring to the revolutions of the stars:

"In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth one glorious voice, Forever singing as they s.h.i.+ne- 'The Hand that made us is Divine.'"

Our sun, the centre of the small system of worlds of which the earth is one, is distant from us about ninety-three million miles. In winter it is nearer; in summer farther off. Light travels this distance in about eight minutes, to be exact, the rate is 186,400 miles per second.

To get an idea of the immensity of the distance of the so-called fixed stars, let us take this as a base of comparison. The nearest fixed star to us is _Alpha Centauri_, which is one of the brightest as seen in the southern heavens. It requires four and one-quarter years for a beam of light to travel from this star to earth at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, thus showing that Alpha Centauri is about two hundred and seventy-five thousand times as far from us as is the sun, in other words, more than 25,575,000,000,000 miles, which, expressed in our notation, reads twenty-five trillion, five hundred and seventy- five billion miles, a number which the mind of man is incapable of grasping. To use the old familiar ill.u.s.tration of the express train, it would take the "Twentieth Century Limited," which does the thousand mile trip between New York and Chicago in less than twenty-four hours, some one million two hundred and fifty thousand years at the same speed to travel from the earth to _Alpha Centauri_. _Sirius_, the Dog-Star, is twice as far away, something like eight or nine "light" years from our solar system; the Pole-Star is forty-eight "light" years removed from us, and so on with the rest, to an infinity of numbers. From the dawn of creation in the eternal cosmos of matter, light has been travelling from some stars in the infinitude of s.p.a.ce at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, but so remote are they from our system that it has not reached us as yet. The contemplation is bewildering; the mind sinks into nothingness in consideration of a magnitude so great and distance so confusing. What lies beyond?--a region which numbers cannot measure and thought cannot span, and beyond that?--the eternal answer,--G.o.d.

In face of the contemplation of the vastness of creation, of its boundlessness the question ever obtrudes itself,--What place have we mortals in the universal cosmos? What place have we finite creatures, who inhabit this speck of matter we call the earth, in this mighty scheme of suns and systems and never-ending s.p.a.ce. Does the Creator of all think us the most important of his works, that we should be the particular objects of revelation, that for us especially heaven was built, and a G.o.d-man, the Son of the Eternal, came down to take flesh of our flesh and live among us, to show us the way, and finally to offer himself as a victim to the Father to expiate our transgressions.

Mystery of mysteries before which we stand appalled and lost in wonder.

Self-styled rationalists love to point out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all the unimaginable vastness of suns and systems, filling for all we know endless s.p.a.ce, should take any special interest in so mean and pitiful a creature as man, inhabiting such an infinitesimal speck of matter as the earth, which depends for its very life and light upon a second or third-rate or hundred-rate Sun.

From the earliest times of our era, the sneers and taunts of atheism and agnosticism have been directed at the humble believer, who bows down in submission and questions not. The fathers of the Church, such as Augustine and Chrysostom and Thomas of Aquinas and, at a later time, Luther, and Calvin, and Knox, and Newman, despite the war of creeds, have attacked the citadel of the scoffers; but still the latter hurl their javelins from the ramparts, battlements and parapets and refuse to be repulsed. If there are myriads of other worlds, thousands, millions of them in point of magnitude greater than ours, what concern say they has the Creator with our little atom of matter? Are other worlds inhabited besides our own. This is the question that will not down--that is always begging for an answer. The most learned savants of modern time, scholars, sages, philosophers and scientists have given it their attention, but as yet no one has been able to conclusively decide whether a race of intelligent beings exists in any sphere other than our own. All efforts to determine the matter result in mere surmise, conjecture and guesswork. The best of scientists can only put forward an opinion.

Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the most brilliant minds our country has produced, says: "It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in s.p.a.ce." Professor Mitch.e.l.l of the Cincinnati Observatory, in his work, "Popular Astronomy," says,--"It is most incredible to a.s.sert, as so many do, that our planet, so small and insignificant in its proportions when compared with the planets with which it is allied, is the only world in the whole universe filled with sentient, rational, and intelligent beings capable of comprehending the grand mysteries of the physical universe." Camille Flammarion, in referring to the utter insignificance of the earth in the immensity of s.p.a.ce, puts forward his view thus: "If advancing with the velocity of light we could traverse from century to century the unlimited number of suns and spheres without ever meeting any limit to the prodigious immensity where G.o.d brings forth his worlds, and looking behind, knowing not in what part of the infinite was the little grain of dust called the earth, we would be compelled to unite our voices with that universal nature and exclaim--'Almighty G.o.d, how senseless were we to believe that there was nothing beyond the earth and that our abode alone possessed the privilege of reflecting Thy greatness and honor.'"

The most distinguished astronomers and scientists of a past time, as well as many of the most famous divines, supported the contention of world life beyond the earth. Among these may be mentioned Kepler and Tycho, Giordano Bruno and Cardinal Cusa, Sir William and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Bentley and Dr. Chalmers, and even Newton himself subscribed in great measure to the belief that the planets and stars are inhabited by intelligent beings.

Those who deny the possibility of other worlds being inhabited, endeavor to show that our position in the universe is unique, that our solar system is quite different from all others, and, to crown the argument, they a.s.sert that our little world has just the right amount of water, air, and gravitational force to enable it to be the abode of intelligent life, whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions of years, before this earth was fit to sustain human life. The same transitions which took place on earth are taking place in other planets of our system, and other systems, and it is but reasonable to a.s.sume that in other systems there are much older worlds than the earth, and that these have arrived at a more developed state of existence, and therefore have a life much higher than our own. As far as physical conditions are concerned, there are suns similar to our own, as revealed by the spectroscope, and which have the same eruptive energy. Astronomical Science has incontrovertibly demonstrated, and evidence is continually increasing to show that dark, opaque worlds like ours exist and revolve around their primaries. Why should not these worlds be inhabited by a race equal or even superior in intelligence to ourselves, according to their place in the cosmos of creation?

Leaving out of the question the outlying worlds of s.p.a.ce, let us come to a consideration of the nearest celestial neighbor we have in our own system, the planet Mars: Is there rational life on Mars and if so can we communicate with the inhabitants?

Though little more than half the earth's size, Mars has a significance in the public eye which places it first in importance among the planets.

It is our nearest neighbor on the outer side of the earth's path around the Sun and, viewed through a telescope of good magnifying power, shows surface markings, suggestive of continents, mountains, valleys, oceans, seas and rivers, and all the varying phenomena which the mind a.s.sociates with a world like unto our own. Indeed, it possesses so many features in common with the earth, that it is impossible to resist the conception of its being inhabitated. This, however, is not tantamount to saying that if there is a race of beings on Mars they are the same as we on Earth. By no means. Whatever atmosphere exists on Mars must be much thinner than ours and far too rare to sustain the life of a people with our limited lung capacity. A race with immense chests could live under such conditions, and folk with gills like fish could pa.s.s a comfortable existence in the rarefied air. Besides the tenuity of the atmosphere, there are other conditions which would cause life to be much different on Mars. Attraction and gravitation are altogether different. The force with which a substance is attracted to the surface of Mars is only a little more than one-third as strong as on the earth.

For instance one hundred pounds on Earth would weigh only about thirty-eight pounds on Mars. A man who could jump five feet here could clear fifteen feet on Mars. Paradoxical as it may seem, the smaller a planet, in comparison with ours and consequently the less the pull of gravity at its centre, the greater is the probability that its inhabitants, if any, are giants when compared with us. Professor Lowell has pointed out that to place the Martians (if there are such beings) under the same conditions as those in which we exist, the average inhabitant must be considered to be three times as large and three times as heavy as the average human being; and the strength of the Martians must exceed ours to even a greater extent than the bulk and weight; for their muscles would be twenty-seven times more effective.

In fact, one Martian could do the work of fifty or sixty men.

It is idle, however, to speculate as to what the forms of life are like on Mars, for if there are any such forms our ideas and conceptions of them must be imaginary, as we cannot see them on Mars we do not know. There is yet no possibility of seeing anything on the planet less than thirty miles across, and even a city of that size, viewed through the most powerful telescope, would only be visible as a minute speck. Great as is the perfection to which our optical instruments have been brought, they have revealed nothing on the planet save the so-called ca.n.a.ls, to indicate the presence of sentient rational beings.

The ca.n.a.ls discovered by Schiaparelli of the Milan Observatory in 1877 are so regular, outlined with such remarkable geometrical precision, that it is claimed they must be artificial and the work of a high order of intelligence. "The evidence of such work," says Professor Lowell, "points to a highly intelligent mind behind it."