370 



SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1885. 



The first will be recognized as Kewcomb's "runaway star," so graph- 

 ically described iu his Popular Astronomy; but it will be seen that the 

 others have velocities which are at least comparable with that of Groom- 

 bridge 1830, and indicate momenta that represent vast amounts of 

 energy. The discovery of huge suns like our own rushing through 

 space with these great velocities is a matter of more than usual interest 

 just now, from the fact that Mr. Denning's claimed discovery of fixed 

 meteor-radiants has raised the question as to the possible existence of 

 broad swiftly flying streams of meteorites iu interstellar space, moving 

 with velocities entirely beyond the control of our sun, and so broad 

 that it takes the solar system some years to pass through them. (An 

 annual parallax of 1° in a meteor-radiant corresponds to a velocity of 

 over 1,000 miles per second for the meteor stream.) The idea of such 

 streams moving with such velocities is a startling one, and, if shown to 

 be true, gives a very ^ i vid idea of the forces acting, or which have 

 acted, in stellar space. It seems at first highly improbable that such 

 can be the case, but with the hard facts of Groombridge 1830 and these 

 other swiftly flying suns staring us in the face, the idea is worth con- 

 sidering, at any rate. If these suns are the products of condensation 

 due to central attraction, so that the luminous energy by which they 

 reveal themselves to us was once energy of translation, it is no violent 

 assumption to suppose that some of their constituent parts were once 

 Moving with much greater velocities than that of the present whole. 

 In fact, the man who should claim as a possibility that space contains 

 broad belts of small particles moving with velocities which are the result- 

 ant of all the forces acting on them since primeval chaos, and which have 

 not yet been gathered into the control of any of the stellar systems among 

 which they are sweeping, would find much to confirm his ideas in tiiese 

 giant swiftly flying suns. The question is certainly of sufiicient interest 

 Jind importance to call for a thoroigh overhaulingof the present methods 

 of determining meteor-radiants, for probably most astronomers would 

 today be disposed to deny in toto the existence of the greater part of 

 these so-called radiant-points." (H. M. Paul, Science, November 27, 1885.) 



Star tcith large proper motion in Sculptor. — Dr. Gould has noticed a 

 case of large proper motion in a star in Sculptor, barely of the 8th mag- 



