Marvels of Modern Science

by Paul Severing

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 space 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 space.

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-shining 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 rushing away towards the "furthermost" of space 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 constitution of the photospheric cloud-shell, 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 mass. 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 massive 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 anticipated 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."