Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/118

114 same for all stars of the same class of spectrum. It could be tested by the stars forming a cluster, like the Pleiades, which are doubtless all at nearly the same distance from us. The spectra of stars of the tenth magnitude, or fainter, can be photographed well enough to be measured in this way, so that the relative distances of nearly a million stars could be thus determined.

Another method which would have a more limited application, would depend on the velocity of light. It has been maintained that the velocity of light in space is not the same for different colors. Certain stars, called Algol stars, vary in light at regular intervals when partially eclipsed by the interposition of a large dark satellite. Recent observations of these eclipses, through glass of different colors, show variations in the time of obscuration. Apparently, some of the rays reach the earth sooner than others, although all leave the star at the same time. As the entire time may amount to several centuries, an excessively small difference in velocity would be recognizable. A more delicate test would be to measure the intensity of different portions of the spectrum at a time when the light is changing most rapidly. The effect should be opposite according as the light is increasing or diminishing. It should also show itself in the measures of all spectroscopic binaries.

A third method of great promise depends on a remarkable investigation carried on in the physical laboratory of the Case School of Applied Science. According to the undulatory theory of light, all space is filled with a medium called ether, like air, but as much more tenuous than air as air is more tenuous than the densest metals. As the earth is moving through space at the rate of several miles a second, we should expect to feel a breeze as we rush through the ether, like that of the air when in an automobile we are moving with but one thousandth part of this velocity. The problem is one of the greatest delicacy, but a former officer of the Case School, one of the most eminent of living physicists, devised a method of solving it. The extraordinary result was reached that no breeze was perceptible. This result appeared to be so improbable that it has been tested again and again, but every time, the more delicate the instrument employed, the more certainly is the law established. If we could determine our motion with reference to the ether, we should have a fixed line of reference to which all other motions could be referred. This would give us a line of ever-increasing length from which to measure stellar distances.

Still another method depends on the motion of the sun in space. There is some evidence that this motion is not straight, but along a curved line. We see the stars, not as they are now, but as they were when the light left them. In the case of the distant stars this may have occurred centuries ago. Accordingly, if we measure the motion of the sun from them, and from near stars, a comparison with its actual