Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/317

Rh proportional to the square of the diameters of the spheres which bound it. Hence, supposing an equal distribution of the stars, each of these regions will contain a number of stars increasing as the square of the radius of the region. Since the amount of light which we receive from each individual star is as the inverse square of its distance, it follows that the sum total of the light received from each of these spherical shells will be equal. Thus, as we include sphere after sphere, we add equal amount of light without limit. The result of the successive addition of these equal quantities, increasing without limit, would be that if the system of stars extended out indefinitely the whole heavens would be filled with a blaze of light as bright as the sun.

Now, as a matter of fact, such is very far from being the case. It follows that infinite space is not occupied by the stars. At best there can only be collections of stars at great distances apart.

The nearest approximation to such an appearance as that described is the faint, diffused light of the Milky Way. But so large a fraction of this illumination comes from the stars which we actually see in the telescope that it is impossible to say whether any visible illumination results from masses of stars too faint to be individually seen. Whether the cloud-like impressions, which Barnard has found in long-exposed photographs of the Milky Way, are produced by countless distant stars, too faint to impress themselves even upon the most sensitive photographic plate, is a question of extreme interest which cannot be answered. But even if we should answer it in the affirmative, the extreme faintness of light shows that the stars which produce it are not scattered through infinite space; but that, although they may extend much beyond the limits of the visible stars, they thin out very rapidly. The evidence, therefore, seems to be against the hypothesis that the stars we see form part of an infinitely extended universe.

But there are two limitations to this conclusion. It rests upon the hypothesis that light is never lost in its passage to any distance, however great. This hypothesis is in accordance with our modern theories of physics, yet it cannot be regarded as an established fact for all space, even if true for the distances of the visible stars. About half a century ago Struve propounded the contrary hypothesis that the light of the more distant stars suffers an extinction in its passage to us. But this had no other basis than the hypothesis that the stars were equally thick out to the farthest limits at which we could see them.

It might be said that he assumed the hypothesis of an infinite universe, and from the fact that he did not see the evidence of infinity, concluded that light was lost. The hypothesis of a limited universe and no extinction of light, while not absolutely proved, must be regarded