MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



which in its entirety involves the non-mathematical 

 mind in hopeless tangles. But it will be obvious that 

 any observations of the seeming movements of stellar 

 objects viewed from the earth must be checked and 

 interpreted in the light of the actual movements of 

 the earth itself, else they would be almost as hope- 

 lessly faulty as was the primitive conception that the 

 sun and stars revolve about us. 



Notwithstanding the complexities of the problem, 

 the modern astronomer has been able to gain some 

 tolerably clear notions as to the movements of the 

 million or so of stars that lie nearest us in space. 

 The more distant galaxies, to be sure, show no shift 

 whatever in position, so far as present observations 

 go; but this fact has its advantages, inasmuch as the 

 faint objects in the background supply fixed points 

 of comparison, which alone make possible the demon- 

 stration of the movements of the nearer stars. 



It will be obvious from what has just been said 

 as to the movements of the earth itself that the ap- 

 parent movement of such stars as are near enough 

 to reveal any shift of position at all will be of sundry 

 types. As the solar system drifts forward through 

 space at the rate of twelve and a half miles per sec- 

 ond, the nearer stars will seem year by year to drift 

 backward as compared with distant stars, just as 

 nearby objects viewed from a car window seem to 

 move backward. Meantime this backward drift will 

 be complicated by the actual movements in different 

 directions of the stars themselves. A star may, for 

 example, be moving so rapidly in a course parallel to 

 ours that it shows a forward instead of a backward 



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