Everything connected with the history of this star is of exceptional interest; but all that had already been ascertained was completely overshadowed by the astonishing discovery made in November, 1902, that nebulous prominences were observed darting out from the star with a velocity of at least 100,000 miles every second of time. These astonishing changes have been confirmed at the two great American observatories, the Yerkes and the Lick.
Whence and how had destruction come upon this particular star? At one hour the star is dark, cold, solid. A few hours later this dark, solid, cold body is a blazing world, its solid mass blown apparently into countless fragments; from every fragment, big or little, there pour streams of fiery vapor; for millions of miles round the star there is a whirlpool of fire, a tempest of flame; and from end to end of this great universe of ours the brightness of the burning star pulsates. Three explanations have been given.
The one that naturally arises in our mind is that it was struck by another star. Two worlds, each moving at the rate of twenty miles a second, come into collision, and the result is the annihilation of both. The force of their impact, changed into heat, drives their elements into vapor. Such a catastrophe is quite possible in a universe like ours, where stars and worlds, millions and millions in number, sweep down the great avenues of space with a velocity far beyond our comprehension.
We take it that when the crack of doom comes to this earth of ours it will be in this fashion. Some great dark star will strike our sun fair and square, and then in the twinkling of an eye, before the inhabitants of earth know what has taken place, sun and moon and planet will be wrapped up and dissolved in an atmosphere of fire.
We can in a certain rough way compute the increase in temperature that would arise from the collision of two great orbs. Thus, let us suppose that Nova Persei was moving onward through space with a velocity of ten miles a second—a moderate velocity, be it noted, for a star—when it collided with the body that wrought its destruction. The impact would be terrific, and the result of it would be not only the complete disintegration of both stars, but a sudden rise in temperature of about five hundred thousand degrees, an increase sufficient to vaporize the hardest adamant.
The second theory which has been suggested as explanatory not only of Nova Persei, but of all new stars, is a modification of the foregoing. This theory is that the new star in its flight through space suddenly plunged into a nebula, or into some portion of space denser than that through which it had already passed. This explanation is not only intelligible but reasonable. If the new star plunged into a region filled with matter even as rare as air, the friction would immediately set the star on fire. We see the same phenomenon every night when a meteor hustles through our atmosphere. The meteoric rocks, with the chill of empty space in and around them, dash into our upper air. A few seconds are ample for the practical annihilation of most of them: in that brief space of time they have been subjected to a heat many times greater than that of a Bessemer furnace.
We can imagine Nova Persei as some monster meteor, a meteor larger than the sun, plunging into a gaseous mass somewhat like our air. In a few hours its temperature would be increased a million-fold. This increase would fill the surrounding space with fire, and there would be an immense and ever-increasing area at fervent heat.
To the mind of the writer this explanation has most to commend it. It is the one that is most in harmony with the information which has been gathered by hundreds of observers aided by the finest of modern scientific equipment. But there are other explanations. There will always be other explanations so long as the world lasts.
One of these explanations is of more interest than the rest, inasmuch as it makes a link of connection between the recent terrible volcanic eruption in the West Indies and the sudden appearance of a new star like Nova Persei. It is suggested that Nova Persei is, or rather was, a world somewhat like our own, only vastly larger—that is, there was an inner core of molten matter and an outer shell of solid material. One day, according to the explosion theory, this outer shell burst, and the interior fires rushed hither and thither like a devouring flood all over the stellar globe. Vast chemical changes went on as the lambent flames turned everything solid into streams of lava. Great electrical disturbances took place all round the star. The whole phenomenon of Nova Persei, according to this theory, is just the destruction of St. Pierre on a sidereal scale.
Such a doom, of course, is possible in any star or planet whose interior is still molten. At any moment the imprisoned fires might break their barriers and change a cold, fruitful, life-bearing earth into a furnace; but it is far from probable that any such fate will ever be meted out to our planet or to any other, and, at any rate, destruction did not come to Nova Persei in this manner. No explosion could account for an access of heat and light any way comparable to that which was observed. Neither could any interior disruption be violent enough to hurl the star into fragments. The gravitational hold of the star would prevent this dismemberment. Yet during the ages the mind of man has been irresistibly drawn to this conception of the world’s end, so much so that perhaps, after all, our instinct is right and our science wrong, and the vision of the Minorite Celano of the