THE NEW ASTRONOMY. 



I. THE ST()R\' OI- XO\'A 1'P':RS[:1. 



Bv PKUFKSSUR A. W. 1;KK1:KT( )X. 



As the twentieth century dawned, an astronomiral 

 event occurred that had not had its equal in the 

 history of celestial obser\ation for some three 

 hundred }-ears. A brilliant temporar\- star suddenh- 

 blazed out in the Northern hemisphere, and as these 

 evanescent flashes are called Nova or New Stars. 

 this star was called the New Star of the New- 

 Century, and because it was in the constellation of 

 Perseus, it was called No\-a Persei. 



Nothing in the whole realm of Nature is so wonder- 

 ful as this event, the bursting out of a giant sun. its 

 then increasing with amazing rapidity, until it is 

 sometimes many scores of thousands of times the 

 brilliancy of the magnihccnt luminarv that keeps the 

 earth in its orbit. 



.And no other celestial e\ent has so fascinated the 

 minds of men, and drawn them to study the heavens, 

 as these exploding suns. It was one of these 

 lirilliant portents that caused Hipparchus to draw 

 up his historic list of the stars. It was another that 

 caused Tycho Brahe to lea\e the lamps and furnaces 

 of his laboratory, and come out into the open to 

 study the celestial vault and make his wonderful 

 measurement of the places of the planets. It was a 

 temporary star that drew Galileo into that war of 

 words and wonder of achievement and ideas that 

 cost him so much, and also made him teach the 

 Copernican doctrine of the moving earth. 



And again this year, the new star in the constella- 

 tion Lacerta, discovered by Mr. Espin, has caused an 

 immense amount of discussion not mereh' amongst 

 the learned societies, but even in the popular 

 newspapers all over the world. It is commonh- 

 thought that the star of Bethlehem was a new one. 



Speaking of these flashing bodies the late Professor 

 Newcomb says: — "The so-called new stars which 

 blaze forth from time to time, offer to our sight the 

 most astounding phenomena ever presented to the 

 physical philosopher." Carl Snyder sa)-s : — " Could 

 they be closely regarded, the blazing up of these 

 novae would doubtless be, in mere extent, the most 

 impressive spectacle the realms of Nature afford." 

 That very able astronomer, the late Miss Agnes 

 Clarke sa}-s : — " What they w ere. w hat they are. 

 what they become, are all difficult questions to 

 answer. But the crux of the whole problem 

 concerns the manner of their vivification. A bod\- 

 previously inert is transformed wellnigh instan- 

 taneously into a radiative centre of immeasurable 

 intensity. How is the change effected ? " 



No human being is capable of conceiving the 

 vastness of this phenomena. To us. the earth is an 



immense body : we know it weighs more than six 

 thousand million of million of million of tons. Our 

 Sun is more than a million times the size of the 

 Earth, and those vast globes of fire must often be 

 man\- scores of thousands of times the volume of the 



Sun. Yet Nc 



Persei rose from invisibilit\' to its 



maximum in less than fortv-eight hours, and in a 

 few months was again in\'isible to the naked eye. 

 The stupendous nature of the phenomena and their 

 evanescent character constitutes their chief wonder. 

 Newcombe speaks of their impenetrable mystery. 

 He says : — " The cause of these outbursts is a 

 question of transcendent interest, the answer to 

 which science has not up to the present time been 

 able to ofter any suggestions not open to question." 

 Miss Agnes Clarke says: — "That even the most 

 promising explanation is not mereh' unscientific, but 

 outrageous to common sense." 



There are an immense number of explanatorx' 

 suggestions in various books on astronom\-. all of 

 which are absolutely puerile when we regard the 

 insufficiency of energy to explain the phenomena. 

 The question then occurs. Can anv solution to their 

 mystery be suggested ? Is there any storehouse of 

 energy that can be laid under contribution to supph' 

 fuel for so stupendous a conflagration ? And the 

 answer is clear and explicit. There is. 



In the collisions of suns, we have a sufticienc\- of 

 energy to account for the whole phenomena. Hence 

 a detailed study of the phenomena of solar collisions 

 offers the most promising ground for the solution of 

 the mystery of these immeasurable conflagrations. 



Imp.vct, a Law of Nature. 



A very superficial study shows us that solar 

 collisions cannot be looked upon as accidental, 

 chance, or mere random occurrences. Mutual 

 attraction, and many other agencies, something like 

 a dozen in all, have been investigated, and the 

 conclusion is forced upon us that the number of 

 solar impacts that must be produced b}' these 

 many agents are hundreds of thousands of times 

 more numerous than mere random encounters. 

 The next thing that shows itself in our investi- 

 gations is, that not one of all these collisions that 

 are brought about by attraction, and so on, can be a 

 direct centre-to-centre impact. The bodies must 

 move in curved orbits, and hence the collisions so 

 produced must be of a tangential or grazing character. 



It was also shown that the extreme velocities 

 produced by attraction in all cases of colliding suns 

 must be of the order of hundreds of miles a second. 



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