Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact of vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly appeared, and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as suddenly disappeared, to show that there are mighty disturbances in the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty non-luminous or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of light and heat, as the attending planets revolve about the common centre of gravity in our own system. And this is especially true of that vast and fathomless star-stratum, called the Milky-way, in which most of these peculiar phenomena occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.

That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from our own planet--a circumstance by no means improbable from the vastness of the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of stars marching therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be accounted for in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their apparent rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation Hercules at the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of Arcturus' flight), it is impossible to determine, in the present state of astronomical knowledge, whether the apparent change of place in any star is real or merely optical. But, in the case of double stars, each is travelling (independently of its other motions) about the common centre of gravity obtaining in its own system, and these relative movements may account for the greater or less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one, present a greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.

The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified in our own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With stupendous planetary systems revolving about each of these apparently double stars, they must respectively have a revolution, real as well as apparent, about their own centres of gravity--not one and the same centre, but different and far distant centres. Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with planes of movement at right angles with it, they would necessarily present the appearance of one star revolving about the other--an apparent motion only.

And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of temporary stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens, flaming up into stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and then disappearing altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or apparent stars, was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its maximum brilliancy at the very first, but gradually diminishing in size until the end of seventeen months, when it disappeared, without change of place, from the heavens. This temporary star was visible in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the Milky-way, within whose swarm of stellar worlds most of these apparent stars have made their appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for this stellar phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed and molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation of "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is manifestly too absurd for scientific recognition. A more satisfactory explanation may be here suggested:--Supposing the apparent relative position of any six or seven stars of the sixth magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed by the combined motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as to throw them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered together as to show their several star-discs as one, we should unquestionably have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as long as this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the combined motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from the first to the second magnitude, and so on until it reached the sixth magnitude, when it would pass beyond the reach of unaided human vision. But as the star of Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at its fullest brilliancy, it may be objected that this suggested theory fails to meet the required conditions.

As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction of stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a century. We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded stars, in great numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that these temporary stars almost uniformly appear in that zone renders the suggestion here made quite as rational, in the way of speculation at least, as that of "vapory celestial matter" suddenly condensed into a star of the first magnitude, as Sir. William Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not probable.

Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of stars, lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various parts of the heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance of a star of the fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if more thickly clustered, present that of a star of the first magnitude. But powerful telescopes resolve them into a large number of stars, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude. One such cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been resolved into not less than fifteen hundred small stars of very low magnitude, and pretty widely scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander Von Humboldt, in speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that "their disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces or in their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too weak too excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no longer see is not necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same time the question of Pliny--"Stellæ an obirent nascerenturve?"

But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of these stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There are, for instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant clusters of stars, dark granular spots, of greater or less magnitude, in which the most powerful telescopes show no glints or traces of stars. They are among Humboldt's smaller "fissures or chasms in the heavens," in which he asserts that there is a great paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if one of these thick stellar clusters, which show to the naked eye as a single star, should, by the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system and the stellar group in question, pass into the field of one of these small rents or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of the stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that magnitude so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or fissure. It would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in the clouds of a dark night, and disappear as soon as it had traversed, or apparently traversed, the rift in question. This galactic curtain, it should be borne in mind, is made up of 18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less than 720,000,000 dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this is unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of the more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch, even in the telescopic field, mere glints of light as the intervening swarms of stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the foreground and shut out the more distant view. It is only through these rents and fissures in this great galactic curtain that the brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever be seen; and these glints of far distant light, showing dimly through this curtain, may account for the peculiar milky appearance of the galaxy, arising from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams themselves. It was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic curtain that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained visible for a period of seventeen months.