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Show Say All the Stars Are Aglow, Scientists Declare That, Like the Sun, They Are Masses of Burning Matter Fires Die Down and Then Blaze Out Again as of Yore. During the last sixty years searchers search-ers of the heavens have made the discovery that the celestial bodies known to us as stars are similar in many respects to the sun, some considerably con-siderably larger, others smaller, but on the average not much different in size and nature Irom the sun. They are at least the visible stars are-great are-great glowing globes of gaseous matter. mat-ter. . As a rule these vast furnaces burn steadily. Sometimes, however, the fires seem to die down and then blaze out again as of yore. Three hundred such stars are known to astronomers, says Chambers' Journal; they are called variable stars because of the waxing and waning of their light. Now and again the seething fires prove too strong for the bonds of attractive at-tractive force which hold the star together, and with one mighty upheaval up-heaval the vast globe is shattered into fragments, blown into atoms, veritably "dissolved into thin air." Thousands of years after this explosion ex-plosion the record of the catastrophe reaches the earth and a solitary watcher in the old barony of Bon-nington, Bon-nington, in the year of grace 1901, sees a new star suddenly blaze out in the midnight sky, to fade away only as its predecessors had done, leaving, leav-ing, perchance, not a trace in the sky to tell the spot where once a world existed. Among the millions of stars are to be found bodies in all stages of development. Some are glowing with an intensity of heat and light far beyond bur utmost conception; con-ception; others are slowly cooling down already they are dull red in color; some are cold and dark and dead. . No telescope will ever perceive these latter bodies and no camera will detect them. We only know that they are there by their influence over the light and motion of bright stars. One of the most interesting sections of the cow astronomy deals with these dead, dark stars, and, although no eye has seen them, or ever will see them, still we are able to ascertain ascer-tain their size, weight and position just as if they were in the zenith of their glory. |