EXPLORING THE GLORIES OF THE FIRMAMENT 



157 



The next witness is a planet, Neptune 

 (see pages 167 and 168). 



NEPTUNE TELLS HIS STORY 



"If you please, sir, I long flattered my- 

 self with the thought that I was an uncle 

 that you Earth-ites never knew you had. 

 I am an elder brother of Mother Earth, 

 though for ages and ages she and her chil- 

 dren never suspected my existence. 



"But back in the 'forties' of the nine- 

 teenth century my brother Uranus over- 

 took me in our Marathon around the 

 sun. Though our track is a billion miles 

 wide and he has the rail, yet whenever 

 he passes me I fret him so much that 

 he gets a case of 'nerves.' 



"Two astronomers, Adams of England 

 and Eeverrier of Erance, each working 

 without knowing that the other was en- 

 gaged on the same problem, undertook 

 to diagnose my brother's case of nerves 

 and to explain his perturbations. Each 

 finally reached the conclusion that the 

 trouble was caused by me, as yet an un- 

 discovered planet. 



"They figured that I, though undis- 

 covered, must be nearly a billion miles 

 farther out in space than Uranus ; that 

 I must be eighty-five times as big and 

 sixteen times as heavy as the earth. 

 They also calculated that I must have a 

 year twice as long as that of Uranus 

 and 165 times as long as the earth's. 



"They said that the perturbations of 

 Uranus were due to the fact that every 

 now and then he got between the sun 

 and this hypothetical me, and that the 

 rival pulls of the sun and myself upon 

 him were responsible for his nervous- 

 ness. And then they, in effect, made a 

 most audacious prophecy. They said 

 that if they were right about it I would 

 put in my appearance at a certain hour, 

 on a certain day, in a certain spot of 

 the heavens, to answer whether their 

 conclusions were right or not. 



"And, sure enough, I was right there, 

 Johnny-on-the-spot, exactly on schedule 

 time and in my assigned position. I am 

 quite ready to testify, therefore, that a 

 man who can project his mind nearly 

 three billion miles into space and recog- 

 nize my unseen presence by the effect 



I have on my brother comes pretty near 

 to knowing what he is talking about." 



Our next witness as to the credibility 

 of astronomers is a ray of light. We 

 will hear its story : 



"Yes, I am a ray of light. Once 

 men thought I was instantaneous. They 

 tried by various devices and expedients 

 to ascertain whether I was or not. But 

 by no experiment they could make were 

 they able to discover that it required any 

 interval of time for me to pass from one 

 place to another. 



"However, a man by the name of 

 Roemer finally found that an eclipse of 

 Jupiter's moons seemed to occur about 

 sixteen minutes later when the earth was 

 on the side of the sun away from Jupi- 

 ter than when on the side nearest that 

 planet. 



"He concluded that this was not be- 

 cause the moons were behind time, but 

 because it took me sixteen minutes longer 

 to come to the earth when crossing its 

 orbit than when not having this extra 

 distance to travel. Here was evidence 

 that I was not instantaneous and indi- 

 cations that I travel at the rate of about 

 eleven million miles a minute. 



"But these astronomers were not sat- 

 isfied with that deduction or the tests 

 that followed. Finally Dr. Simon New- 

 comb and his associate, the talented Pro- 

 fessor Michelson, decided to put me to 

 a test I could not dodge. 



DEVISING SPEEDOMETER EOR LIGHT 



"They erected a great revolving mir- 

 ror in the grounds at Fort Myer, over- 

 looking the Washington Monument, 2 T 4 

 miles away. At the latter's base they 

 set up a stationary mirror. Then they 

 turned the revolving mirror at the rate 

 of 250 revolutions a second, which sent 

 me hurtling through space toward the 

 fixed reflector. It caught me and hurled 

 me back as though it were a tennis player 

 and I the ball. If on returning I should 

 reach the identical spot on the revolving 

 mirror from which I had departed, they 

 would know that I was instantaneous. 



"On the other hand, if I did not come 

 back to that identical spot, they could 

 conclude that it took me some time to 

 make the trip — the time represented by 



