Flowers of the Sky

by Richard A. Proctor

V.
THE END OF MANY WORLDS.

A sign has recently appeared in the heavens which has been interpreted in a way suggesting that many worlds like our own have undergone a terrible catastrophe, every living creature upon them being consumed as by fire. I propose briefly to consider some of the thoughts suggested by this strange event.

It is difficult when we look at the star-lit heavens, suggestive as they are of solemn peace, to conceive the stupendous energy, the fierce uproar and tumult, of which even the faintest visible star in reality tells us. Pythagoras spoke of the harmony of the celestial spheres, which we are only prevented from hearing by its continuity. "There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest," said the science of the middle ages,

"But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim."

The science of our own time tells us a still stranger story. There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, she says, but in his motion throbs like a mighty heart, still pulsating life to the worlds which circle round it. But while our powers of vision are limited to the narrow range of our present telescopes, we cannot watch the action of these great centres of energy, nor can we hope that the uproar of those remote fires will ever reach mortal ears, though to the mind's ear clear and distinct. It is no longer a mere fancy that each star is a sun. Science has made this an assured fact, which no astronomer thinks of doubting. We know that in certain general respects each star resembles our sun. Each is glowing like our sun with an intense heat. Around each, as around our sun, are the vapours of many elements. In each the fires are maintained, as they are maintained in our sun, in some way which may be partly mechanical, partly chemical, but which certainly does not in the least resemble combustion. We know that in each star processes resembling in violence those taking place in our own sun must be continually in progress, and that such processes must be accompanied by a noise and tumult compared with which all the forms of uproar known upon our earth are as absolute silence. The crash of the thunderbolt, the bellowing of the volcano, the awful groaning of the earthquake, the roar of the hurricane, the reverberating peals of loudest thunder, any of these, or all combined, are as nothing compared with the tumult raging over every square mile, every square yard, of the surface of each one among the stars.

If we remember this when we hear of stars varying in brightness, we shall perceive that the least change which could be recognised from our remote stand-point must represent an accession or falling off of energy corresponding to far more than all the energies existing on our earth, or indeed on all the members of the solar system taken together. Astronomers recognise our sun as in one sense a variable star; for we can hardly suppose that he shines with the same degree of brilliancy when many spots mark his surface as when he is quite free from spots; and astronomers know that these changes in the sun's condition correspond to wonderful changes in his activity. When spots are most numerous, the coloured flames rage with fierce energy over his whole globe, metallic vapours are shot forth from below his visible surface with velocities of many miles per second. Whereas, when he has no spots, the coloured flames sink down from their former height of tens of thousands of miles, till they are but a few thousand miles in height; while metallic vapours are seldom emitted, and never to the same height, or with the same velocity, as when the spots are most numerous. But though the sun thus varies in condition, and probably in his total brightness, we cannot suppose that such variations could be recognised from the distance of even the nearest among the fixed stars. What, then, must be the nature of changes taking place in a star, that we, at our enormous distance, should be able to recognise them! We may well believe that the entire aspect of such a star must be changed to the inhabitants, if such there are, of worlds circling around them.

If, however, the changes taking place in stars, whose variations of brightness can just be recognised, must be amazing, how stupendous must be the changes affecting a star which alternates from brightness to invisibility, like Mira, the Star Wonderful, in the constellation of the Whale! how destructive those affecting a star like Eta, of the ship Argo, which has varied from the fourth magnitude to a lustre nearly equalling that of Sirius, and thence to the lowest limit of visibility, in the course of the last hundred years!