MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



bulk of the stars, exclusive of those of the Milky 

 Way, form a vast lens-shaped structure. 



Our solar system is seemingly not far from the 

 center of the lens. 



The far 'distant clusters that make up the Milky 

 Way lie coiled about the edges of the lens. 



The stars that make .up the nearby streaming; 

 clusters just referred to all lie in the central lens. As 

 we turn our telescopes toward the flattened surface 

 of the lens (that is to say, toward the galactic poles) 

 the stars seem to thin out. Our telescopes seem to 

 penetrate to the confines of the universe in these di- 

 rections. Toward the rims of the lens the thinning 

 out is less obvious, since we now take in the countless 

 myriads of the Milky Way; yet even here there is a 

 relative falling off in numbers as the smallest magni- 

 tudes are reached, suggesting that here also we are 

 actually penetrating to the confines of the system, 

 if you please to the borders of the universe. Clusters 

 of stars, as Mr. S. Waters has shown, are grouped 

 in the region of the Milky Way; whereas nebulae 

 group themselves as far as possible away from it. 

 But the meaning of this arrangement no one at pres- 

 ent knows. 



As we attempt to picture in imagination this vast 

 lenticular structure comprising in the aggregate all 

 the matter of the universe, the thought comes nat- 

 urally to mind that the entire system with its hun- 

 dred million or thousand million stars may be whirl- 

 ing about the axis of the galactic poles, with some 

 giant sun so distant that it seems to us no different 

 from other stars at its center of revolution. 



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