Curiosities of the Sky by Garrett Serviss (beach books .TXT) 📕

direct front-to-front encounter. But even a close approach, without any actual collision, would probably prove disastrous, owing to the tidal influence of each of the bodies on the other. Suns, in consequence of their enormous masses and dimensions and the peculiarities of their constitution, are exceedingly dangerous to one another at close quarters. Propinquity awakes in them a mutually destructive tendency. Consisting of matter in the gaseous, or perhaps, in some cases, liquid, state, their tidal pull upon each other if brought close together might burst them asunder, and the photospheric envelope being destroyed the internal incandescent mass would gush out, bringing fiery death to any planets that were revolving near. Without regard to the resulting disturbance of the earth's orbit, the close approach of a great star to the sun would be in the highest degree perilous to us. But this is a danger which may properly be regarded as indefinitely remote, since, at our present location in space, we are certainly far from every star except the sun, and we may feel confident that no great invisible body is near, for if there were one we should be aware of its presence from the effects of its attraction. As to dark nebulæ which may possibly lie in the track that the solar system is pursuing at the rate of 375,000,000 miles per year, that is another question - and they, too, could be dangerous!

This brings us directly back to 'Nova Persei,' for among the many suggestions offered to explain its outburst, as well as those of other temporary stars, one of the most fruitful is that of a collision between a star and a vast invisible nebula. Professor Seeliger, of Munich, first proposed this theory, but it afterward underwent some modifications from others. Stated in a general form, the idea is that a huge dark body, perhaps an extinguished sun, encountered in its progress through space a widespread flock of small meteors forming a dark nebula. As it plunged into the swarm the friction of the innumerable collisions with the meteors heated its surface to incandescence, and being of vast size it then became visible to us as a new star. Meanwhile the motion of the body through the nebula, and its rotation upon itself, set up a gyration in the blazing atmosphere formed around it by the vaporized meteors; and as this atmosphere spread wider, under the laws of gyratory motion a rotation in the opposite direction began in the inflamed meteoric cloud outside the central part of the vortex. Thus the spectral lines were caused to show motion in opposite directions, a part of the incandescent mass approaching the earth simultaneously with the retreat of another part. So the curious spectroscopic observations before mentioned were explained. This theory might also account for the appearance of the nebulous spiral first seen some six months after the original outburst. The sequent changes in the spectrum of the 'nova' are accounted for by this theory on the assumption, reasonable enough in itself, that at first the invading body would be enveloped in a vaporized atmosphere of relatively slight depth, producing by its absorption the fine dark lines first observed; but that as time went on and the incessant collisions continued, the blazing atmosphere would become very deep and extensive, whereupon the appearance of the spectral lines would change, and bright lines due to the light of the incandescent meteors surrounding the nucleus at a great distance would take the place of the original dark ones. The vortex of meteors once formed would protect the flying body within from further immediate collisions, the latter now occurring mainly among the meteors themselves, and then the central blaze would die down, and the original splendor of the phenomenon would fade.

But the theories about Nova Persei have been almost as numerous as the astronomers who have speculated about it. One of the most startling of them assumed that the outburst was caused by the running amuck of a dark star which had encountered another star surrounded with planets, the renewed outbreaks of light after the principal one had faded being due to the successive running down of the unfortunate planets! Yet another hypothesis is based on what we have already said of the tidal influence that two close approaching suns would have upon each other. Supposing two such bodies which had become encrusted, but remained incandescent and fluid within, to approach within almost striking distance; they would whirl each other about their common center of gravity, and at the same time their shells would burst under the tidal strain, and their glowing nuclei being disclosed would produce a great outburst of light. Applying this theory to a 'nova,' like that of 1866 in the 'Northern Crown,' which had been visible as a small star before the outbreak, and which afterward resumed its former aspect, we should have to assume that a yet shining sun had been approached by a dark body whose attraction temporarily burst open its photosphere. It might be supposed that in this case the dark body was too far advanced in cooling to suffer the same fate from the tidal pull of its victim. But a close approach of that kind would be expected to result in the formation of a binary system, with orbits of great eccentricity, perhaps, and after the lapse of a certain time the outburst should be renewed by another approximation of the two bodies. A temporary star of that kind would rather be ranked as a variable.

The celebrated French astronomer, Janssen, had a different theory of Nova Persei, and of temporary stars in general. According to his idea, such phenomena might be the result of chemical changes taking place in a sun without interference by, or collision with, another body. Janssen was engaged for many years in trying to discover evidence of the existence of oxygen in the sun, and he constructed his observatory on the summit of Mount Blanc specially to pursue that research. He believed that oxygen must surely exist in the sun since we find so many other familiar elements included in the constitution of the solar globe, and as he was unable to discover satisfactory evidence of its presence he assumed that it existed in a form unknown on the earth. If it were normally in the sun's chromosphere, or coronal atmosphere, he said, it would combine with the hydrogen which we know is there and form an obscuring envelope of water vapor. It exists, then, in a special state, uncombined with hydrogen; but let the temperature of the sun sink to a critical point and the oxygen will assume its normal properties and combine with the hydrogen, producing a mighty outburst of light and heat. This, Janssen thought, might explain the phenomena of the temporary stars. It would also, he suggested, account for their brief career, because the combination of the elements would be quickly accomplished, and then the resulting water vapor would form an atmosphere cutting off the radiation from the star within.

This theory may be said to have a livelier human interest than some of the others, since, according to it, the sun may carry in its very constitution a menace to mankind; one does not like to think of it being suddenly transformed into a gigantic laboratory for the explosive combination of oxygen and hydrogen! But while Janssen's theory might do for some temporary stars, it is inadequate to explain all the phenomena of Nova Persei, and particularly the appearance of the great spiral nebula that seemed to exhale from the heart of the star. Upon the whole, the theory of an encounter between a star and a dark nebula seems best to fit the observations. By that hypothesis the expanding billow of light surrounding the core of the conflagration is very well accounted for, and the spectroscopic peculiarities are also explained.

Dr Gustov Le Bon offers a yet more alarming theory, suggesting that temporary stars are the result of atomic explosion; but we shall touch upon this more fully in Chapter 14.

Twice in the course of this discussion we have called attention to the change of color invariably undergone by temporary stars in the later stages of their career. This was conspicuous with Nova Persei which glowed more and more redly as it faded, until the nebulous light began to overpower that of the stellar nucleus. Nothing could be more suggestive of the dying out of a great fire. Moreover, change of color from white to red is characteristic of all variable stars of long period, such as 'Mira' in Cetus. It is also characteristic of stars believed to be in the later stages of evolution, and consequently approaching extinction, like Antares and Betelgeuse, and still more notably certain small stars which 'gleam like rubies in the field of the telescope.' These last appear to be suns in the closing period of existence as self-luminous bodies. Between the white stars, such as Sirius and Rigel, and the red stars, such as Aldebaran and Alpha Herculis, there is a progressive series of colors from golden yellow through orange to deep red. The change is believed to be due to the increase of absorbing vapors in the stellar atmosphere as the body cools down. In the case of ordinary stars these changes no doubt occupy many millions of years, which represent the average duration of solar life; but the temporary stars run through similar changes in a few months: they resemble ephemeral insects - born in the morning and doomed to perish with the going down of the sun.

Explosive and Whirling Nebulæ

One of the most surprising triumphs of celestial photography was Professor Keeler's discovery, in 1899, that the great majority of the nebulæ have a distinctly spiral form. This form, previously known in Lord Rosse's great 'Whirlpool Nebula,' had been supposed to be exceptional; now the photographs, far excelling telescopic views in the revelation of nebular forms, showed the spiral to be the typical shape. Indeed, it is a question whether all nebulæ are not to some extent spiral. The extreme importance of this discovery is shown in the effect that it has had upon hitherto prevailing views of solar and planetary evolution. For more than three-quarters of a century Laplace's celebrated hypothesis of the manner of origin of the solar system from a rotating and contracting nebula surrounding the sun had guided speculation on that subject, and had been tentatively extended to cover the evolution of systems in general. The apparent forms of some of the nebulæ which the telescope had revealed were regarded, and by some are still regarded, as giving visual evidence in favor of this theory. There is a 'ring nebula' in Lyra with a central star, and a 'planetary nebula' in Gemini bearing no little resemblance to the planet Saturn with its rings, both of which appear to be practical realizations of Laplace's idea, and the elliptical rings surrounding the central condensation of the Andromeda Nebula may be cited for the same kind of proof.

But since Keeler's discovery there has been a decided turning away of speculation another way. The form of the spiral nebulæ seems to be entirely inconsistent with the theory of an originally globular or disk-shaped nebula condensing around a sun and throwing or leaving off rings, to be subsequently shaped into planets. Some astronomers, indeed, now reject Laplace's hypothesis in toto, preferring to think that even our solar system originated from a spiral nebula. Since the spiral type prevails among the existing nebulæ, we must make any mechanical theory of the development of stars and planetary systems from them accord with the requirements which that form imposes. A glance at the extraordinary variations upon the spiral which Professor Keeler's photographs reveal is sufficient to convince one of the difficulty of the task of basing a general theory upon