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Show THE MASSING STAR OF BETHLEHEM Strange Conditions on the Surfaces of Our Neighbors in Space Which WauldMakc Life Entirely Different From Our Own, "Behold, there ami win men from the cut to Jerusaler I( tj,ng, wnero U he that la bora V inB of th JewsT IVr wo havo teen li a iar In llio cut and ro come to jorshlp him " 80 much says the f jospel of Matthew bout the star of, Huhlehem legend oq the one hand has bulled Itself with the ilmple ator y( wovrlng around It wonderful dct Hi and skepticism on the other han J haa donlOd It altogether or sought a, rational explanation ot It. The as Ire .somer, appealed to can on-ly on-ly aar bo does not know Asked It ho brilliant temporary atar that blaxed la the noonday aky In 1672, and that la cedlted, wrongly It seems, with bavins, converted Tyche llraho from law tntastronomy, may not be tho utnt atar that waa teen In 912, and the same, that heralded the birth of Chrlat. ho,Vbtnks It la not probable, It did not nrrmar again In 1880, aa It ahould have (done If It were the eamc, and he finds mo evidence of Identity Continually nseatered with lettera about It, the 'Greenwich ob-ervatory Isiuea lta circular, cir-cular, and declines to bo "Interviewed" anore. The belief In the kindly lntereat ot the heavenly bodies In our affairs Jidda unwillingly, howover, to the cold negation of aclenco It not the aura, rely the planets must gather together tn wIUipss our Chrlatniastlde Kurely Uiey must, man) think, stand round the sun In tho eime orderly array at Olirlstmss as when the good tidings wero proclaimed How would they look, seen from a distant atarT What em "Arctium, as he drives his hounds round the pole In their leash ot flroT ' Alasl It can only be answered.ho probably prob-ably seen nothing It wo could take the awful Journey from here to the nearest star, long beforo we could reach It our glorious sun would have faded almost out of sight All his planet quite Molted out, he wjuld himself with difficulty bo found at all Let us take tho wlnga. of Milton's sublime archangel and fly an ay toward tho bright group ot stars, Orion that bines now In our eastern evening aky Lot ua fly with the speed of light In four hours we shall reach the last out-post out-post ot tho sun's plinctary kingdom but not for more than threo years yet hall wo reach the nearest atar At this outpojt let us pauso and look bick Our dazxllng sun l no bigger than the red planet Mars which ve sco In the northeast tonight And tho planets? Ttiey have all shrunk to little pale dots Only a few of them can bo found at all. If we had halted half way out.where she llttlo new planet that we call D q. rolls In his strange orbit round the un, now coming In almost as near as Shriveled with everlasting drough' on the moon, and drenched perhaps with storms something llko our own on Mars, we should probably And ourselves our-selves on Jupiter now walking on a scorching soil and again pelted with terrific storms ot scalding rain a rain perhaps of liquid metals Instead of water Leaving the molestly moonlit sky of the earth we should And ahlnlng on Mars two little moons moving, one swiftly westward and one slowly east ward through the heavens on Jupiter Ave moons.uf which two or three would at ays be visible, and un Saturn an Innumerable hoit of tittle moons mil lions upon millions making a solid arch of light across the sky If we should try to move about on these strange surfaces, how varied our experiences would be' Nowhere, prob ably, should we find our green hilts and plenint stroims On our nearest neighbor tho moon would be vast plains where not a hill could be seen all perfectly destitute ot moisture, vegetation or animal life, and ending suddenly In awful mountains equally desolate, and so precipitous as to be Impassable by the foot of man On Jupiter tho shrinking that makes mountains and valleys with all their charm of scenery, has probably hardly commenced, and we should find ourselves our-selves alternately plodding over vast hot level plains and plashing through scalding lakes and seas surrounded by a lite, If there bo any life at all totally unllko any that we have ever seen, but perhaps partially Imaginable to thoso who have seen geologists' pic- the earth and again retreating beyond Mars, we should not have seen much more. The sun would havo been brighter, but the planets, except tho nearest ones, would have been no bigger. big-ger. Only It we could get tho sun to reduce his giant bulk and dim his overpowering over-powering rays could we seo the members mem-bers ot the fjmlly that surround him. On theso conditions such a picture as tho one shown here would bo seen Thus our system would appear grouped at this Chrlstmss season, excopt that proportion has been sacrificed In our picture The aun la a thousand tlmea too small for his planets, the plansts re ten thousand times too large for tho distance between them If wo could turn back and visit each of these bodies In turn, what unlm gtnabla differences of scene, of climate, cli-mate, ot all conceivable conditions, ' would present themselves Scorched on Mercury by a burning sun, with even tlmea the hoat that bo pours upon the earth, wo should next freete on Neptune, with nine hundred times our winter's cold Marching on the waterless moon for two weeks at a time under a datillng, cloudless sun, moving slowly across a coal-black sky, wo should plunge suddenly, without twilight. Into a night of two weeks, from which we ahould emerge again , nvddenly. . All this except the Milky Way, as we leave It behind will suffer no great ihange Somewhat fainter the atars will be, and the constellation may slightly change Its shape but the Milky Mil-ky Way will be left behind In a year or two of our flight and will gather round the aun as a cloud ot small BaamaKJBEPr&flRBBH ' 7 hanomis BBLHHlH&CTSKaaflBBBBm. " JgSTtLLITe MM " aaaaaaaK.raaaaT JKnTc&iH&SH mBMKESufStiSSMSSBKKlK' ' j i''wHtMnfitaH eaBBasaaflKK&sfoatflaVBrcF KSSBHMBBWifiSKM rfSAsH 1 u MaBHafflrTOiyiHi II TAXaWlaaJEgrwSATcLLlTrMIIIWSgiHM lf-T7Pn7f TI,B PLANETS AND THE MI8S1NO 8TAII OF BETHLEHEM turea ot the early life on our globe, such as It was millions of years before man made his advent. And at last, If all other difficulties of existence were removed, the difficulty diffi-culty of overpowering weight would, on some of these orbs, make life, that Is to say our life, hard or utterly Impossible Im-possible While In Mars a man who carries bis own weight, say ot 140 pounds, would weigh only seventy, and could skip lightly and merrily on Its surface, on Jupiter his weight Increased In-creased to 350 pounds, he could scarcely scarce-ly drag his feet along, and on the aun bis lega would be crushed under his own weight ot two tons This Is as nersi as we can now Judge, from a knowledgo that Is on tome points perfect and on others very uncertain, un-certain, bow our companion planeta would appear If we could visit them; but seen from where we baited Just now In our vast Journey they would be but pale, almost Invisible moons round a not very brilliant star And we have traveled only four hours with the speed ot light Lei us go on and on In our flight toward Orion Behind us lies the beautiful constellation, the Scorpion, which we see In our southern south-ern aky during tho summer, surrounded surround-ed by the beautiful glow of the Milky Way. stars The sun will dwindle to a very poor star, the planets will vanish aid when, at the end ot three or four years of flight (or perhaps more, for the distance ot the atar for which we are bound la very uncertain), we reach oar nearest atar neighbor In thla direction, direc-tion, our vast and Imposing solar system sys-tem will be seen as a small atar In the constellation Scorpio, surrounded by a little baty cloud, such as we can see In Andromeda now, faintly shining, about 10 o'clock, In our western sky, where ono can pick It out without much dlfl-culty dlfl-culty If one Just knows where to look for It Chrlatmaa or New Year, summer sum-mer or winter, such Is the appearance of our little world of worlds, and such It probably haa been for millions of years, and will be tor millions of years to come Alfred O Compton, professor ot applied mathematics College ot the City ot Now York. |