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

them. In truth, it is much easier to criticize Laplace's hypothesis than to invent a satisfactory substitute for it. If the spiral nebulæ seem to oppose it there are other nebulæ which appear to support it, and it may be that no one fixed theory can account for all the forms of stellar evolution in the universe. Our particular planetary system may have originated very much as the great French mathematician supposed, while others have undergone, or are now undergoing, a different process of development. There is always a too strong tendency to regard an important new discovery and the theories and speculations based upon it as revolutionizing knowledge, and displacing or overthrowing everything that went before. Upon the plea that 'Laplace only made a guess' more recent guesses have been driven to extremes and treated by injudicious exponents as 'the solid facts at last.'

Before considering more recent theories than Laplace's, let us see what the nature of the photographic revelations is. The vast celestial maelstrom discovered by Lord Rosse in the 'Hunting Dogs' may be taken as the leading type of the spiral nebulæ, although there are less conspicuous objects of the kind which, perhaps, better illustrate some of their peculiarities. Lord Rosse's nebula appears far more wonderful in the photographs than in his drawings made with the aid of his giant reflecting telescope at Parsonstown, for the photographic plate records details that no telescope is capable of showing. Suppose we look at the photograph of this object as any person of common sense would look at any great and strange natural phenomenon. What is the first thing that strikes the mind? It is certainly the appearance of violent whirling motion. One would say that the whole glowing mass had been spun about with tremendous velocity, or that it had been set rotating so rapidly that it had become the victim of 'centrifugal force,' one huge fragment having broken loose and started to gyrate off into space. Closer inspection shows that in addition to the principal focus there are various smaller condensations scattered through the mass. These are conspicuous in the spirals. Some of them are stellar points, and but for the significance of their location we might suppose them to be stars which happen to lie in a line between us and the nebula. But when we observe how many of them follow most faithfully the curves of the spirals we cannot but conclude that they form an essential part of the phenomenon; it is not possible to believe that their presence in such situations is merely fortuitous. One of the outer spirals has at least a dozen of these star-like points strung upon it; some of them sharp, small, and distinct, others more blurred and nebulous, suggesting different stages of condensation. Even the part which seems to have been flung loose from the main mass has, in addition to its central condensation, at least one stellar point gleaming in the half-vanished spire attached to it. Some of the more distant stars scattered around the 'whirlpool' look as if they too had been shot out of the mighty vortex, afterward condensing into unmistakable solar bodies. There are at least two curved rows of minute stars a little beyond the periphery of the luminous whirl which clearly follow lines concentric with those of the nebulous spirals. Such facts are simply dumbfounding for anyone who will bestow sufficient thought upon them, for these are suns, though they may be small ones; and what a birth is that for a sun!

Look now again at the glowing spirals. We observe that hardly have they left the central mass before they begin to coagulate. In some places they have a 'ropy' aspect; or they are like peascods filled with growing seeds, which eventually will become stars. The great focus itself shows a similar tendency, especially around its circumference. The sense that it imparts of a tremendous shattering force at work is overwhelming. There is probably more matter in that whirling and bursting nebula than would suffice to make a hundred solar systems! It must be confessed at once that there is no confirmation of the Laplacean hypothesis here; but what hypothesis will fit the facts? There is one which it has been claimed does so, but we shall come to that later. In the meanwhile, as a preparation, fix in the memory the appearance of that second spiral mass spinning beside its master which seems to have spurned it away.

For a second example of the spiral nebulæ look at the one in the constellation Triangulum. God, how hath the imagination of puny man failed to comprehend Thee! Here is creation through destruction with a vengeance! The spiral form of the nebula is unmistakable, but it is half obliterated amid the turmoil of flying masses hurled away on all sides with tornadic fury. The focus itself is splitting asunder under the intolerable strain, and in a little while, as time is reckoned in the Cosmos, it will be gyrating into stars. And then look at the cyclonic rain of already finished stars whirling round the outskirts of the storm. Observe how scores of them are yet involved in the fading streams of the nebulous spirals; see how they have been thrown into vast loops and curves, of a beauty that half redeems the terror of the spectacle enclosed within their lines - like iridescent cirri hovering about the edges of a hurricane. And so again are suns born!

Let us turn to the exquisite spiral in Ursa Major; how different its aspect from that of the other! One would say that if the terrific coil in Triangulum has all but destroyed itself in its fury, this one on the contrary has just begun its self-demolition. As one gazes one seems to see in it the smooth, swift, accelerating motion that precedes catastrophe. The central part is still intact, dense, and uniform in texture. How graceful are the spirals that smoothly rise from its oval rim and, gemmed with little stars, wind off into the darkness until they have become as delicate as threads of gossamer! But at bottom the story told here is the same - creation by gyration!

Compare with the above the curious mass in Cetus. Here the plane of the whirling nebula nearly coincides with our line of sight and we see the object at a low angle. It is far advanced and torn to shreds, and if we could look at it perpendicularly to its plane it is evident that it would closely resemble the spectacle in Triangulum.

Then take the famous Andromeda Nebula (see Frontispiece), which is so vast that notwithstanding its immense distance even the naked eye perceives it as an enigmatical wisp in the sky. Its image on the sensitive plate is the masterpiece of astronomical photography; for wild, incomprehensible beauty there is nothing that can be compared with it. Here, if anywhere, we look upon the spectacle of creation in one of its earliest stages. The Andromeda Nebula is apparently less advanced toward transformation into stellar bodies than is that in Triangulum. The immense crowd of stars sprinkled over it and its neighborhood seem in the main to lie this side of the nebula, and consequently to have no connection with it. But incipient stars (in some places clusters of them) are seen in the nebulous rings, while one or two huge masses seem to give promise of transformation into stellar bodies of unusual magnitude. I say 'rings' because although the loops encompassing the Andromeda Nebula have been called spirals by those who wish utterly to demolish Laplace's hypothesis, yet they are not manifestly such, as can be seen on comparing them with the undoubted spirals of the Lord Rosse Nebula. They look quite as much like circles or ellipses seen at an angle of, say, fifteen or twenty degrees to their plane. If they are truly elliptical they accord fairly well with Laplace's idea, except that the scale of magnitude is stupendous, and if the Andromeda Nebula is to become a solar system it will surpass ours in grandeur beyond all possibility of comparison.

There is one circumstance connected with the spiral nebulæ, and conspicuous in the Andromeda Nebula on account of its brightness, which makes the question of their origin still more puzzling; they all show continuous spectra, which, as we have before remarked, indicate that the mass from which the light comes is either solid or liquid, or a gas under heavy pressure. Thus nebulæ fall into two classes: the 'white' nebulæ, giving a continuous spectrum; and the 'green' nebulæ whose spectra are distinctly gaseous. The Andromeda Nebula is the great representative of the former class and the Orion Nebula of the latter. The spectrum of the Andromeda Nebula has been interpreted to mean that it consists not of luminous gas, but of a flock of stars so distant that they are separately indistinguishable even with powerful telescopes, just as the component stars of the Milky Way are indistinguishable with the naked eye; and upon this has been based the suggestion that what we see in Andromeda is an outer universe whose stars form a series of elliptical garlands surrounding a central mass of amazing richness. But this idea is unacceptable if for no other reason than that, as just said, all the spiral nebulæ possess the same kind of spectrum, and probably no one would be disposed to regard them all as outer universes. As we shall see later, the peculiarity of the spectra of the spiral nebulæ is appealed to in support of a modern substitute for Laplace's hypothesis.

Finally, without having by any means exhausted the variety exhibited by the spiral nebulæ, let us turn to the great representative of the other species, the Orion Nebula. In some ways this is even more marvelous than the others. The early drawings with the telescope failed to convey an adequate conception either of its sublimity or of its complication of structure. It exists in a nebulous region of space, since photographs show that nearly the whole constellation is interwoven with faintly luminous coils. To behold the entry of the great nebula into the field even of a small telescope is a startling experience which never loses its novelty. As shown by the photographs, it is an inscrutable chaos of perfectly amazing extent, where spiral bands, radiating streaks, dense masses, and dark yawning gaps are strangely intermingled without apparent order. In one place four conspicuous little stars, better seen in a telescope than in the photograph on account of the blurring produced by over-exposure, are suggestively situated in the midst of a dark opening, and no observer has ever felt any doubt that these stars have been formed from the substance of the surrounding nebula. There are many other stars scattered over its expanse which manifestly owe their origin to the same source. But compare the general appearance of this nebula with the others that we have studied, and remark the difference. If the unmistakably spiral nebulæ resemble bursting fly-wheels or grindstones from whose perimeters torrents of sparks are flying, the Orion Nebula rather recalls the aspect of a cloud of smoke and fragments produced by the explosion of a shell. This idea is enforced by the look of the outer portion farthest from the bright half of the nebula, where sharply edged clouds with dark spaces behind seem to be billowing away as if driven by a wind blowing from the center.

Next let us consider what scientific speculation has done in the effort to explain these mysteries. Laplace's hypothesis can certainly find no standing ground either in the Orion Nebula or in those of a spiral configuration, whatever may be its situation with respect to the grand Nebula of Andromeda, or the 'ring' and 'planetary' nebulæ. Some other hypothesis more consonant with the appearances must