Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/860

800 satisfactory way, we should have observations of a million of these bodies made at intervals of at least a considerable fraction of a century, we see what an enormous task the astronomers dealing with this problem have before them, and how imperfect must be any determination of the distance of the stars based on our motion through space. So far as an estimate can be made, it seems to agree fairly well with the results obtained by the other methods. Speaking roughly, we have reason, from the data so far available, to believe that the stars of the Milky Way are situated at a distance between 100,000,000 and 200,000,000 times the distance of the sun. At distances less than this it seems likely that the stars are distributed through space with some approach to uniformity. We may state as a general conclusion, indicated by several methods of making the estimate, that nearly all the stars which we can see with our telescopes are contained within a sphere not likely to be much more than 200,000,000 times the distance of the sun.

The inquiring reader may here ask another question. Granting that all the stars we can see are contained within this limit, may there not be any number of stars without the limit which are invisible only because they are too far away to be seen?

This question may be answered quite definitely if we grant that light from the most distant stars meets with no obstruction in reaching us. The most conclusive answer is afforded by the measure of starlight. If the stars extended out indefinitely, then the number of those of each order of magnitude would be nearly four times that of the magnitude next brighter. For example, we should have nearly four times as many stars of the sixth magnitude as of the fifth; nearly four times as many of the seventh as of the sixth, and so on indefinitely. Now, it is actually found that while this ratio of increase is true for the brighter stars, it is not so for the fainter ones, and that the increase in the number of the latter rapidly falls off when we make counts of the fainter telescopic stars. In fact, it has long been known that, were the universe infinite in extent, and the stars equally scattered through all space, the whole heavens would blaze with the light of countless millions of distant stars separately invisible even with the telescope.

The only way in which this conclusion can be invalidated is by the possibility that the light of the stars is in some way extinguished or obstructed in its passage through space. A theory to this effect was propounded by Struve nearly a century ago, but it has since been found that the facts as he set them forth do not justify the conclusion, which was, in fact, rather hypothetical. The theories of modern science converge toward the view that, in the pure ether of space, no single ray of light can ever be lost, no matter how far it may travel. But there is another possible cause for the existence of light. During the last few years discoveries of dark and therefore invisible stars have been made by means of the spectroscope with a success which would have been quite incredible a very few years ago, and which, even to-day, must excite wonder and admiration. The general conclusion is that, besides the shining stars which exist in space, there may be any number of dark ones, forever invisible in our telescopes. May it not be that these bodies are so numerous as to cut off the light which we would otherwise receive from the more distant bodies of the universe? It is of course impossible to answer this question in a positive way, but the probable conclusion is a negative one. We may say with certainty that dark stars are not so numerous as to cut off any important part of the light from the stars of the Milky Way, because, if they did, the latter would not be so clearly seen as it is. Since we have reason to believe that the Milky Way comprises the more distant stars of our system, we may feel fairly confident that not much light can be cut off by dark bodies from the most distant region to which our telescopes can penetrate. Up to this distance we see the stars just as they are. Even within the limit of the universe as we understand it, it is likely that more than one-half the stars which actually exist are too faint to be seen by human vision, even when armed with the most powerful telescopes. But their invisibility is due only to their distance and the faintness of their intrinsic light, and not to any obstructing agency.