A History of Science, vol 3 by Henry Smith Williams (sites to read books for free TXT) 📕

And so at last the full secret was out. The awe-inspiring comet, instead of being the planetary body it had all along been regarded, is really nothing more nor less than a great aggregation of meteoric particles, which have become clustered together out in space somewhere, and which by jostling one another or through electrical action become luminous. So widely are the individual particles separated that the cometary body as a whole has been estimated to be thousands of times less dense than the earth’s atmosphere at sea-level. Hence the ease with which the comet may be dismembered and its particles strung out into streaming swarms.

So thickly is the space we traverse strewn with this cometary dust that the earth sweeps up, according to Professor Newcomb’s estimate, a million tons of it each day. Each individual particle, perhaps no larger than a millet seed, becomes a shooting-star, or meteor, as it burns to vapor in the earth’s upper atmosphere. And if one tiny planet sweeps up such masses of this cosmic matter, the amount of it in the entire stretch of our system must be beyond all estimate. What a story it tells of the myriads of cometary victims that have fallen prey to the sun since first he stretched his planetary net across the heavens!

When Biela’s comet gave the inhabitants of the earth such a fright in 1832, it really did not come within fifty millions of miles of us. Even the great comet through whose filmy tail the earth passed in 1861 was itself fourteen millions of miles away. The ordinary mind, schooled to measure space by the tiny stretches of a pygmy planet, cannot grasp the import of such distances; yet these are mere units of measure compared with the vast stretches of sidereal space. Were the comet which hurtles past us at a speed of, say, a hundred miles a second to continue its mad flight unchecked straight into the void of space, it must fly on its frigid way eight thousand years before it could reach the very nearest of our neighbor stars; and even then it would have penetrated but a mere arm’s-length into the vistas where lie the dozen or so of sidereal residents that are next beyond. Even to the trained mind such distances are only vaguely imaginable. Yet the astronomer of our century has reached out across this unthinkable void and brought back many a secret which our predecessors thought forever beyond human grasp.

A tentative assault upon this stronghold of the stars was being made by Herschel at the beginning of the century. In 1802 that greatest of observing astronomers announced to the Royal Society his discovery that certain double stars had changed their relative positions towards one another since he first carefully charted them twenty years before. Hitherto it had been supposed that double stars were mere optical effects. Now it became clear that some of them, at any rate, are true “binary systems,” linked together presumably by gravitation and revolving about one another. Halley had shown, three-quarters of a century before, that the stars have an actual or “proper” motion in space; Herschel himself had proved that the sun shares this motion with the other stars. Here was another shift of place, hitherto quite unsuspected, to be reckoned with by the astronomer in fathoming sidereal secrets.

Double Stars

When John Herschel, the only son and the worthy successor of the great astronomer, began star-gazing in earnest, after graduating senior wrangler at Cambridge, and making two or three tentative professional starts in other directions to which his versatile genius impelled him, his first extended work was the observation of his father’s double stars. His studies, in which at first he had the collaboration of Mr. James South, brought to light scores of hitherto unrecognized pairs, and gave fresh data for the calculation of the orbits of those longer known. So also did the independent researches of F. G. W. Struve, the enthusiastic observer of the famous Russian observatory at the university of Dorpat, and subsequently at Pulkowa. Utilizing data gathered by these observers, M. Savary, of Paris, showed, in 1827, that the observed elliptical orbits of the double stars are explicable by the ordinary laws of gravitation, thus confirming the assumption that Newton’s laws apply to these sidereal bodies. Henceforth there could be no reason to doubt that the same force which holds terrestrial objects on our globe pulls at each and every particle of matter throughout the visible universe.

The pioneer explorers of the double stars early found that the systems into which the stars are linked are by no means confined to single pairs. Often three or four stars are found thus closely connected into gravitation systems; indeed, there are all gradations between binary systems and great clusters containing hundreds or even thousands of members. It is known, for example, that the familiar cluster of the Pleiades is not merely an optical grouping, as was formerly supposed, but an actual federation of associated stars, some two thousand five hundred in number, only a few of which are visible to the unaided eve. And the more carefully the motions of the stars are studied, the more evident it becomes that widely separated stars are linked together into infinitely complex systems, as yet but little understood. At the same time, all instrumental advances tend to resolve more and more seemingly single stars into close pairs and minor clusters. The two Herschels between them discovered some thousands of these close multiple systems; Struve and others increased the list to above ten thousand; and Mr. S. W.

Burnham, of late years the most enthusiastic and successful of double-star pursuers, added a thousand new discoveries while he was still an amateur in astronomy, and by profession the stenographer of a Chicago court.

Clearly the actual number of multiple stars is beyond all present estimate.

The elder Herschel’s early studies of double stars were undertaken in the hope that these objects might aid him in ascertaining the actual distance of a star, through measurement of its annual parallax—that is to say, of the angle which the diameter of the earth’s orbit would subtend as seen from the star. The expectation was not fulfilled. The apparent shift of position of a star as viewed from opposite sides of the earth’s orbit, from which the parallax might be estimated, is so extremely minute that it proved utterly inappreciable, even to the almost preternaturally acute vision of Herschel, with the aid of any instrumental means then at command. So the problem of star distance allured and eluded him to the end, and he died in 1822 without seeing it even in prospect of solution.

His estimate of the minimum distance of the nearest star, based though it was on the fallacious test of apparent brilliancy, was a singularly sagacious one, but it was at best a scientific guess, not a scientific measurement.

The Distance of the Stars

Just about this time, however, a great optician came to the aid of the astronomers. Joseph Fraunhofer perfected the refracting telescope, as Herschel had perfected the reflector, and invented a wonderfully accurate “heliometer,” or sun-measurer. With the aid of these instruments the old and almost infinitely difficult problem of star distance was solved. In 1838 Bessel announced from the Konigsberg observatory that he had succeeded, after months of effort, in detecting and measuring the parallax of a star. Similar claims had been made often enough before, always to prove fallacious when put to further test; but this time the announcement carried the authority of one of the greatest astronomers of the age, and scepticism was silenced.

Nor did Bessel’s achievement long await corroboration.

Indeed, as so often happens in fields of discovery, two other workers had almost simultaneously solved the same problem—Struve at Pulkowa, where the great Russian observatory, which so long held the palm over all others, had now been established; and Thomas Henderson, then working at the Cape of Good Hope, but afterwards the Astronomer Royal of Scotland.

Henderson’s observations had actual precedence in point of time, but Bessel’s measurements were so much more numerous and authoritative that he has been uniformly considered as deserving the chief credit of the discovery, which priority of publication secured him.

By an odd chance, the star on which Henderson’s observations were made, and consequently the first star the parallax of which was ever measured, is our nearest neighbor in sidereal space, being, indeed, some ten billions of miles nearer than the one next beyond. Yet even this nearest star is more than two hundred thousand times as remote from us as the sun. The sun’s light flashes to the earth in eight minutes, and to Neptune in about three and a half hours, but it requires three and a half years to signal Alpha Centauri. And as for the great majority of the stars, had they been blotted out of existence before the Christian era, we of to-day should still receive their light and seem to see them just as we do. When we look up to the sky, we study ancient history; we do not see the stars as they ARE, but as they WERE years, centuries, even millennia ago.

The information derived from the parallax of a star by no means halts with the disclosure of the distance of that body. Distance known, the proper motion of the star, hitherto only to be reckoned as so many seconds of arc, may readily be translated into actual speed of progress; relative brightness becomes absolute lustre, as compared with the sun; and in the case of the double stars the absolute mass of the components may be computed from the laws of gravitation. It is found that stars differ enormously among themselves in all these regards. As to speed, some, like our sun, barely creep through space—compassing ten or twenty miles a second, it is true, yet even at that rate only passing through the equivalent of their own diameter in a day.

At the other extreme, among measured stars, is one that moves two hundred miles a second; yet even this “flying star,” as seen from the earth, seems to change its place by only about three and a half lunar diameters in a thousand years. In brightness, some stars yield to the sun, while others surpass him as the arc-light surpasses a candle. Arcturus, the brightest measured star, shines like two hundred suns; and even this giant orb is dim beside those other stars which are so distant that their parallax cannot be measured, yet which greet our eyes at first magnitude. As to actual bulk, of which apparent lustre furnishes no adequate test, some stars are smaller than the sun, while others exceed him hundreds or perhaps thousands of times. Yet one and all, so distant are they, remain mere disklike points of light before the utmost powers of the modern telescope.

Revelations of the Spectroscope

All this seems wonderful enough, but even greater things were in store. In 1859 the spectroscope came upon the scene, perfected by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, along lines pointed out by Fraunhofer almost half a century before. That marvellous instrument, by revealing the telltale lines sprinkled across a prismatic spectrum, discloses the chemical nature and physical condition of any substance whose light is submitted to it, telling its story equally well, provided the light be strong enough, whether the luminous substance be near or far—in the same room or at the confines of space.

Clearly such an instrument must prove a veritable magic wand in the hands of the astronomer.

Very soon eager astronomers all over the world were putting the spectroscope to the test. Kirchhoff himself led the way, and Donati and Father Secchi in Italy, Huggins and Miller in England, and Rutherfurd in America, were the chief