

Problems of Astronomy 



have seen it fly past us a number of times since 

 I commenced this discourse. It would make 

 the journey from the earth to the sun in five days. 

 If it is now near the centre of our system it would 

 probably reach its confines in a million of years. 

 So far as our knowledge of nature goes, there is 

 no force in nature which would ever have set it 

 in motion and no force which can ever stop it. 

 What, then, was the history of this star, and if 

 there are planets circulating around, what the 

 experience of beings who may have lived on those 

 planets during the ages which geologists and 

 naturalists assure us our earth has existed? 

 Did they see, at night, only a black and starless 

 heaven ? Was there a time when, in that heaven, 

 a small faint patch of light began gradually to 

 appear? Did that patch of light grow larger 

 and larger as million after million of years elapsed ? 

 Did it at last fill the heavens and break up into 

 constellations as we now see them ? As millions 

 more of years elapse will the constellations 

 gather together in the opposite quarter, and 

 gradually diminish to a patch of light as the star 

 pursues its irresistible course of 200 miles per 

 second through the wilderness of space, leaving 

 our universe farther and farther behind it, until 

 it is lost in the distance ? If the conceptions of 

 modern science are to be considered as good for 

 all time, a point on 'which I confess to a large 

 measure of scepticism, then these questions must 

 be answered in the affirmative. 



Intimately associated with these problems is 

 45 



