Thus do we come to a rough conception of the cosmos as we conceive it to-day. This concept is made up of ascertained fact in considerable measure and of speculation to a lesser degree. The speculation is based upon inferences which we have a right to draw. They may be wrong, in which case we depend upon the future to apply the necessary corrections. It is therefore safe and quite within the bounds of reason to speculate, and it is worth our while at this point to survey the more important of these speculations.
Sir James Jeans suggests the possibility of the cosmos being a spherical affair having a radius of 80 million light years. This means, in our primitive way of looking at physical dimensions, a diameter of 160 million light years and a circumference of 502 million light years. We have with the 100-inch reflector already penetrated 140 million light years. Einstein suggests that space-time is curved. This particular concept is hard to describe and does not belong in this discussion, but it has important implications for us. Jeans suggests that if Einstein is right, and the indications so far are that he is, and had we a powerful enough telescope, we should be able to look "around" the cosmos and see our Milky Way galaxy some 500 million light years distant. We would be looking the way around. We would be seeing our galaxy as it looked 500 million years ago.
Jeans dares to go even farther. He says it has been quite seriously suggested that the two very faint objects which astronomers have labeled H3433 and M83 may be our near-by nebula neighbors M33 and M31 being looked at the long way around space. When we photograph M33 and M31, we make a picture of the front face which is only some 900,000 light years distant. But when we point our telescope in the exactly opposite direction and photograph H3433 and M83, who is to say that we are not making a picture of the opposite faces of M33 and M31? Jeans says that stranger things than this have come true in astronomy.
This is a startling thought, and it is one to file away in one's mind against a day when it may help us to understand another phenomenon. It contemplates finite space and an all-embracing cosmos. Attempting to gain a rough comprehension of this cosmos in which we intelligent creatures find ourselves is one of the provinces of this book, and anything that assists in this direction is worthy of mention.
Thus far in the paltry 300 years that have elapsed since Galileo showed us how to make and use a telescope, the aspiration has been to penetrate deeper and deeper into space. We have made larger and larger telescopes at greater and greater cost, until to-day it is said that the 200-inch reflector will cost over $10,000,000 when finished and mounted. Incidentally, all of this money will be provided by private contribution of the Carnegie Institution, with no hope of any financial return. But even before the new instrument is anywhere near ready, we are considering how we would go about making one yet more powerful. Various ideas have been suggested, some of which are based upon other methods than merely collecting the light that will enter a tube 16 feet in diameter and concentrating it upon a photographic plate measuring 8 by 10 inches, which is the present method. Something will develop out of these ideas as time goes on, and we may count upon a rapid increase in our powers of cosmic observation in the immediate future.
Another speculation based upon rough computation has to do with the number of suns in the entire cosmos. It is thought that 2,000 million is a fair estimate of the number of suns in the average island universe. Our island universe is estimated to contain from 30,000 to 100,000 million. And in many of the nebulae we suspect the centers are still colossal masses of hot gas not yet formed into suns. An average of 2,000 million per nebula is seen to be conservative.
It is further estimated that the total matter within range of our modern equipment is something like 4,000 million million suns. This is thought to be something like one- third of the total in the cosmos as we visualize it to-day. This postulates a cosmos with 12,000 million million suns. Thus we complete a few speculations regarding the sort of place in which we find ourselves. We seem to live in a structure that is big beyond our powers of comprehension. And yet we inhabitants of a submicroscopic satellite of one of the units possess the intelligence to estimate the complete structure even though we cannot comprehend such a number as our estimate indicates.
We do nor have to comprehend the magnitude of the numbers of individual units, as a matter of fact, any more than we have to comprehend the number of grains of sand on all the sea beaches on Earth in order to gain a concept of the beaches. Our ends are met when we grasp the general proportions of the mysterious structure and realize that it is based upon a systematic plan. The details of this plan are utterly beyond comprehension at this time, but the mere fact that we know there is a plan assures that it will eventually be unraveled and understood.
We fully realize that it is yet too early for us to venture a guess as to many things. A very few of the more intellectual have discovered only recently that some of the basic principles of this cosmos have not been grasped because in our little Earth-bound lives we have been limited to our own particular experiences. We are able to conceive, for example, only three-dimensional space. But an especially brilliant intellect amongst us makes it plain to those competent to judge that there are four dimensions. The fourth is space-time. While the first three are physical, the fourth is a purely intellectual concept. This especially brilliant intellect points out that space and time arc ideas. not physical realities, but the cosmos cannot be comprehended without taking them into account. This brilliant intellect is Dr. Albert Einstein. Says he, "You sense matter. But once sensing it, you need a space in which to put it. Had you never sensed matter, you would never have thought of space."
It is pointed out similarly that time is not a reality. What we experience is an event followed by another event. For convenience we assume an imaginary entity and name it "time," and we use it to separate these events. We cannot physically handle time or space. And so we become aware of the fact that this mysterious structure in which we are wondering if we play a Part cannot be judged entirely as we judge the purely physical experiences we have encountered in our Earth-bound lives. In other words, in contemplating this survey of the cosmos we must not limit ourselves to thoughts of a space that is physical. The moment we do, we must erect a boundary, and immediately we are off the track.
Instead, we must abandon all idea of attempting to visualize space, for there is no such thing. When we include time with space, we have something that has a meaning, although a purely mathematical one. Whether we grasp the significance of space-time or not, we certainly have grasped the fact that there is a profoundly great plan in existence. We have actually seen part of it. We think we may have seen about one-third of a millionth of it. That may not be very much, but nevertheless it is enough to give us a clue as to the whole. We have quite definite ideas as to the procedure under which it evolves and we have confidence enough to speculate as to its approximate present age. We do not agree among ourselves yet as to whether it is a running-down mechanism with a finite life, or whether it is a cyclic affair which lives and dies and is reborn and thus rebuilds itself.
Sir James Jeans is the champion of the rather melancholy running-down conception. He bases his belief upon perfectly sound natural laws. He points out that radiation is accomplished only at the expense of mass. He measures the radiations of our Sun and shows that to maintain its present rate of radiation it must annihilate some 250 million tons of material per minute. Other suns radiate far more, and still others less. But every sun, of the whole 12,000 million million, must be dissipating weight, and most of them at a greater rate than our Sun. Jeans therefore reasons that it is inexorable that a time come when there will be no matter, that all of it will have been radiated away. He does not suggest any theory as to how the original energy was acquired or what becomes of that which has been radiated.
Millikan suggests consideration of a cyclic theory. He concedes that matter is being annihilated in creating radiation, but he contends that the radiation might recreate matter and that we may be witnessing a continuous cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. He suggests, in other words, that possibly the books balance and that the law of the conservation of energy prevails even on a cosmic scale. The conception of the cyclic idea suggests the possibility of there never having been a beginning and that there never will be an end.
It is obvious that we have only begun to understand what we see when we gaze into the sky on a clear night. But we have made a beginning, and that I have taken enough interest to write this book and that you have taken enough to read thus far is just another little bit of evidence that there will be those among us who will give of their wealth and give of their effort that we may continue to unravel the nost fascinating of all mysteries.
Let us proceed to the next step in our survey-a consideration of life and its place in the Great Plan.
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