The Butler County Press

DARK, DEAD STARS
Millions on Millions of Them Are
Flying Through Space.

THE PERILS OF A COLLISION.
What Would Happen if One of the Larger of These Erratic Derelicts Should Whirl Itself Into Our Solar System.

The Birth of a Nebula,

Possibly it has never occurred to many people that there are such bodies as dark stars, but so great an authority as Sir Robert Ball has said that the dark stars are to the bright for numbers as the cold horseshoes in existence are to the red hot ones. For every such hot one there must be many hundreds of cold ones, so that if the simile is sound the heavens must contain an incredible number of these derelicts on the ocean of space, which, having lived their life, have grown cold and dead, but are still racing about at star speed until in their wanderings they meet some other heavenly body in terrific collision.

Such gigantic catastrophe as the clash of two suns, each perhaps millions of miles in diameter, rushing at each other at the rate of twenty or thirty or even more miles per second would result, so the mathematicians tell us, in a world splitting explosion exactly as if each were composed of billions of billions of tons of gunpowder, and as when gunpowder explodes nothing is left but gas and smoke, so in the clash of stars nothing would be left of the two great solid bodies which had collided but an immense whirling mass of incandescent gas called a nebula, of which, as most people know, there are quite a number dotted over the heavens. This maelstrom of gas would sail about among the stars for ages, in the course of which it would naturally cool down and condense into a star system much like our own, with probably a central sun, planets and moon.

Some of these would sooner or later arrive at a condition of temperature suitable for the support of life and as the centuries passed would become peopled with sentient beings. Gradually they would grow too cold for life to exist and finally become frigid, cold dark stars once more. The number of stars visible to the naked eye is only a few thousands. With the best telescope and other instruments it is calculated we can detect about a hundred millions - not a large number (there are fifteen times as many people as that living on this globe); but, judging by Sir Robert Ball's horseshoe simile and reckoning only a hundred dark ones to every bright one, we may take it that there must be at least 10,000,000,000 dark stars chasing about in space, most of which we have never seen and probably never will see.

I say most of which, for perhaps it may come as a surprise to some that the earth we live in is a dark star. So are all the other planets and planetoids of our solar system, which with their moons, of which bodies, shining only by the reflected light of the sun, there are at least 600 known to astronomers. Nor must we forget to mention those bodies called shooting stars which may be seen almost any clear night if patiently watched for. These, though they look like stars, are hardly, as every one knows, to be dignified by the name, being mostly but very small masses of matter flying about in space. They are quite cold and dark until they enter our atmosphere, which they do at such a speed as raises them at once to a white heat by friction of their passage through it, and thus they are revealed to us.

For every one we see there must be many thousands whose paths miss us entirely, ships that pass in the night silently and unknown. Some of these are of immense magnitude and are undoubtedly regular in their course. Others are doubtless flying about the heavens on haphazard paths, and it is conceivable that one might come along and collide with us or our sun.

The result of such a collision would undoubtedly be the end of this earth and its inhabitants. If the intruder were of any respectable size a collision with any of the larger members of the solar system would produce such a conflagration as would raise the temperature of all the rest above the point at which life as we know it could exist. 'The earth and all the inhabitants thereof would be burnt up and the elements would melt with fervent heat.' Even if such a star did not collide, but merely passed through our system, the effect of its attraction would altogether upset present conditions and almost certainly bring about the cessation of life on the earth.

Neither can we encourage ourselves with the hope that the collision would be too sudden for us to know much about it. No such thing. Our astronomers would see the star directly it got near enough for the sun to light it up, probably fifteen or twenty years before it arrived, according to its size and speed. They would be able to calculate its path and foretell to a few minutes the precise moment of the catastrophe, and we should have the added horror of the anticipation of our slowly advancing doom. Indeed, the passage of even a small star quite outside our system by many millions of miles would still have a sufficiently disturbing effect on us to draw us out of our path and alter entirely our climate and temperature. -Chambers' Journal.