460 THE WORLD MACHINE 



collisions, there would yet be a tendency towards the accumula- 

 tion of matter into ever narrower areas. Presently this would 

 produce one enormous body which no collision would shatter. 



It is obvious, for example, that the collision of our sun and 

 Canopus would not mean a dissipation. If the earth fell into 

 the sun, even at enormous speed, its mass is yet too slight to 

 cause the dissipation of the mass of the sun into primeval 

 nebula. In the light of our present estimates, precisely the 

 same thing would be true if our sun were drawn into Canopus. 

 It would add something to the heat of that star ; it would add 

 something to its mass. Canopus would not be destroyed. 



We know nothing of the motion of Canopus. If it were 

 careering through space at the speed of Arcturus, it would be 

 sweeping up suns at a relatively tremendous rate. Whether it 

 be in motion or no, the result would be much the same. We 

 might even conceive it as standing still, and since we know that 

 the stars about it are moving rapidly in every direction, in 

 the end they would one by one approach and be drawn within 

 its gigantic spider's web. 



We might, of course, conceive that a similar process was at 

 work throughout other regions, with the resultant formation of 

 other suns equal in grandeur to Canopus. If two such suns in 

 their turn came in collision, the result would probably mean the 

 dissipation of both into a primitive nebulous condition. But 

 there would be this difference, that whereas the matter of which 

 they were composed had originally extended over vast areas, 

 that which would be occupied by the new nebula thus formed 

 would probably cover but a small extent of the former. If 

 contraction then took place, the resultant system would ap- 

 parently have one vast sun at its centre instead of the original 

 pair. The process which had been followed out by each of them 

 would, after the elapse of an immense period of time, be resumed 

 with double the energy that is to say, with double the attracting 

 force. 



So far as we can now see, there is little to stay and nothing 

 to limit such a process. The end might be delayed through 

 aeons of time, compared with which the life-history of our solar 

 system would appear but seconds in a seeming eternity. It 

 could have but the result which we have surmised. This central 

 mass would dissipate its heat, it would cool just as our planet 

 has cooled, just as the sun is cooling, just as great Canopus 



