We humans, in contemplating ourselves, are prone to marvel at our own importance. Because we know how to build an Empire State Building that is ten times as high as it is wide at the base and yet will not collapse or tip over; because we know how to build and operate a ship that is a fifth of a mile long and yet will not break in two in the middle; because we know how to separate continents and join oceans; because we know how to weigh the Sun and stars, determine their dimensions, temperatures, and the materials of which they are made up; because we know how to modify Nature and create animals, vegetables, fruits, and flowers to suit our needs or our pleasure, some of us thing we are an important factor in this world. But there may be considerable doubt about this importance. When we draw apart and contemplate ourselves from a detached viewpoint, we discover some amazing things.
To begin with, we know next to nothing about ourselves, how we came to be here, and why. We know nothing at all about whether in all the great cosmos we are the only intelligent beings. How came we by this superior intellectual ability? How far may this thing intelligence carry us? Is intelligence finite or infinite? Is it possible that there are other sorts of intelligence than the kind with which we are familiar on our little Earth? Is this cosmos which we appear to inhabit a running down mechanism which will come to an end, or is it a perpetual affair which rebuilds itself as it wears away and never had a beginning and never will have an end? If the latter, may intelligence hope to continue to build upon itself and bridge the death and rebirth process?
To many of us it is a refreshing adventure and a welcome diversion from the hackneyed thoughts of money, work, and worldly matters to speculate upon such things and to wonder what the Great Plan of Nature may have in store for us who possess what appears to be a monopoly of intelligence. Suppose we begin our discussion by taking a good look around us.
When we step outdoors and look skyward on a clear, moonless night, we behold a section of a great, mysterious machine in action. Down the long centuries, since they have been thinking creatures, men have gazed and wondered at the spectacle. Before our eyes spreads the black vault of which we know so little but which contains the key to the mystery. It is spangled with myriads of twinkling points of light. Men have noticed from remote antiquity that a few of these lights constantly shift their position with relation to the others. The vast majority remain in fixed relation to each other and have done so since man has made records. Those half dozen or so which change their relative positions are our brother and sister planets, fellow satellites of our common Parent the Sun. The others are fixed stars.
With the unaided eye the number of stars strikes us as being enormous. By the aid of an ordinary telescope their number becomes multiplied by hundreds. By the aid of a powerful telescope their number becomes multiplied bv hundreds of thousands, while by the aid of the photographic plate and the most powerful telescope their number becomes multiplied by millions of millions. Mere words cannot convey an adequate idea of their numbers. It is necessary actually to see with one’s own eyes a stellar photograph in order to form any concept of the number of stars even in a very small section of the sky.
Figure 1 is a reproduction of a photograph made by the Yerkes observatory of the University of Chicago at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was given several hours exposure, so that there are recorded countless stars that ate invisible to the human eye even when aided by the most powerful telescope. This, of properties of the photographic plate, which the eye does not possess. Each little white speck is a star, and observations show that they are not so very different from our Sun. Such a revelation leads us to ask the question, if there are this many suns in one small section of the great cosmic machine, what must there be in the entire system? It is estimated by astronomers that there must be as many stars, more or less like our Sun, as there are grains of sand on all the sea beaches of the Earth.
Those stars with relation to the others do so because of their nearness to us. They are the planets of our Solar Systemm, our eight brother and sister satellites of the Sun. When photography was developed, a very simple method of distinguishing them from the other stars was offered. It was to expose a photographic plate for several hours, holding any known star stationary on the plate. All the other fixed stars also remained stationary. But every planet would move, leaving a blur or trail on the sensitive plate.
To the unaided eye all stars, planets and fixed stars alike, appear as points of light. In a powerful telescope the nearer planets have a visible aura. But even in the most powerful telescope yet constructed, the 100-inch reflector at the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington near Pasadena, California, all fixed stars are mere points of light only.
In order that we may understand what we are looking at as we proceed, we should know some of the astonishing things that have been discovered in connection with our Solar System, our galaxy, other galaxies, life—the greatest mystery of all, and those two curious manifestations, evolution and intelligence. Let us look over what we know about each of these, for then we shall the better enjoy the thrill that comes from realizing what these discoveries probably signify.
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