14 Immensities of Space 



The sun is about 93 millions of miles away, a dis- 

 tance which light takes eight minutes to traverse. 

 Many people nowadays make the grand tour round 

 the world, about 24,000 miles, in about sixty days. 

 Sir Richard Gregory writes: "In order to travel as 

 many miles as separate us from the sun it would be 

 necessary to make nearly four thousand such jour- 

 neys, and if a traveller started on his circuit as soon 

 as he was born, he would require to live about 650 

 years to finish his task. ... A sensation travels 

 along the nerves at the rate of about a hundred feet 

 in a second. Imagine a man could stretch out his arm 

 and reach to the sun so as to burn his finger ; the sen- 

 sation would start on its journey, but 160 years 

 would elapse before it had reached his brain and 

 made him realize the pain" {The Vault of Heaven, 

 2d ed., 1923, p. 24). Without wishing to make too 

 much of huge dimensions, we feel that there is a basis 

 for reasonable wonder. Light travels 186,000 miles 

 per second, and the distance of six million million 

 miles traversed in a year is called a "light-year." The 

 nearest star is Alpha Centauri, but a flash from it to 

 the sun takes four years to reach its destination ; and 

 the light we receive from Vega left that star twenty- 

 seven years ago. Sir Richard Gregory writes : "Most 

 of the stars seen in the sky without telescopic aid are 

 at such a distance that the light we now analyze left 

 them about the time of Galileo (d. 1642) ; and there 

 are others whose rays, though rushing with lightning 

 speed through the depths of space, only reach us 



