HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 131 



L/et me say right here that if what we would call the end of 

 the world were to come about this ver}' night by the destruction of 

 the earth and every planet belonging to the solar system, including 

 our own sun itself, th.e only effect upon the face of the sky from 

 the nearest fixed star would be that one star had ceased to shine, 

 and that solitary star would be our sun. From Alpha Centauri, 

 tlie nearest fixed star, our glorious sun appears only as an 

 ordinary star. Not a single planet — no, not even Jupiter itself, al- 

 though over 12,000 times larger than the earth — is visible there, 

 because the earth and all the planets only shine by reflected sun- 

 light. At the immense distance that separates one sun from an- 

 other — say, our own sun and the sun Alpha Centauri — the earth 

 being a dark bod3' is quite invisible, like every other member of 

 the solar system, with the single exception of the sun itself. If I 

 have made this important fact quite clear it follows that the de- 

 struction of our world then, by whatever means brought about, 

 would only be quite a local affair as far as the real universe is con- 

 cerned. 



We might reasonably compare the sun and the planets to a 

 small group of islands in the great ocean of space. The nearest 

 star-land we can expect to strike outside this island universe of 

 ours is very remote— in fact, infinitely further off in proportion 

 than the distance that separates the continent of America from 

 Europe across the Atlantic Ocean, or even Asia by way of the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



Nevertheless, as it is an ascertained scientific fact that the sun 

 is in reality moving through space, and dragging all the planets 

 with it, at the rate of eleven miles a second, which is 660 miles a 

 minute or close upon 40,000 miles an hour, what are the probabil- 

 ities of our world coming to an end through the actual collision 

 with one of the thousands of blazing stars that lie around the sun's 

 path ? Well, let me allay any fears that may arise in this direction 

 by saying immediately that even travelling day and night at the 

 prodigious velocity I have mentioned — 40,000 miles an hour — it 

 would take our swift sun no less than 80,000 years to pass over the 

 distance that separates it from the nearest fixed star. There is, 



