Evening Star Newspaper, April 6, 1930, Page 93

-t ol s | S e THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 6, 1930. 3 ceing Twice as Far Into the Sky The new telescope of the California observatory will be so powerful that it will . tance equal to nearly twice the Sun, Moon and Solar Plancets Only Next- Door Neighbors as Astronomers Make Ready to Double the Physical Universe With a Marvelous 200-Inch Telescope That Will Glimpse Hitherto Unprobed Areas of Heavens. BY CHARLES W. DUKE. STRONOMY promises within the next few years amazing new conquests in the astral regions. Explorers of the heavens, benefiting by the remark- able advances of science within the twentieth century, are about to embark upon the most pretentious adventure in the history of mankind—the enlargement of our physical universe to twice its present known dimensions. Eyes of the scientific world are trained upon the West Lynn (Mass.) plant of the General Electric Co., where, under the auspices of the International Education Board, founded by John D. Rockefeller, jr., there is shortly to be constructed for the California Institute of Technology an astronomical mirror of fused quartz having a diameter of 200 inches. Largest of all telescopes in the world at the present time is the giant housed within the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, with a reflecting glass measuring 100 inches across. With this mirror the sun, 92,000,000 miles away, is “close up.” Five billion times more distant than the sun from earth is the nebula Andromeda; and yet heavenly bodies more dis- tant than this star cluster—1750 quintillion miles from Mother Earth—have been studied through the Mount Wilson telescope. Now imagine, if you please, a telescope that will enable a2 man to peer twice as far in a straight line! Light travels in one second more than 50 times the distance between New York and San Francisco. Its speed has been estimated at 186,000 miles per second—more than 11,000,- 000 miles a minute, more than 16,000,000,000 miles a day, more than 5,000,000,000,000 miles a year. Multiply 5,000,000,000.000 miles by 150,000,000 and the resulting figure represents the distance in miles between the earth and the farthormost stars of which man now has knowledg?. ITH the successful consummation of the 5 fascinating project now under way in a New England laboratory—the construction of a 200-inch disc having a diameter of nearly 17 feet and weighing close to 30 tons—the length of humah vision will be doubled. Sci- entists claim that with a 200-inch telescope teflector astronomers will be enabled to look at star groups that are two sextillion—2.000,000 000,000,000,000,000—miles away! The light by which they will be seen, according to cal- culations of the savants,’ started on its jour- ney through space .4,000,000 centuries ago! Prof. Elihu Thomson of Lynn, Mass, en- gaged for years in pioneer work in the fusing of silica glass or quartz sand, is the genius upon whom the astronomical world is depend- ing for achievement of this proposed new mar- vel of science. In his research work he learned that a mirror made of fused quartz would re- tain its exact dimensions under any ordinary change in temperature; that it would not re- quire long annealing, as with glass, and from these facts developed the conclusion that a great mirror so made would be ideal for a super-astronomical telescope. Financed by the younger Rockefeller, and virtually a self-willed prisoner for the last two years in the Massachusetts laboratory of which he is director, Dr. Thomson has made notable progress in his experiments. First an 11-inch disc and then a 22-inch disc and lately a score or more of these quartz discs have been com- pleted and forwarded to the California ob- servatory, where they will function as “find- ers” in the giant telescope when the 200-inch circumference of the earth. The new 200-inch telescope will double the distance man can peer inlo space and permit him to discover wonders of the sky not heretofore revealed. “big-gun” reflecting mirror comes along later. A special building is to be constructed to house the great glass. So great will be the radiation from the fusing furnace that ob- servation of the disc in the making will have to be made from a distance through field glasses. Upon completion it will have to travel from Massachusetts to California by water in- stead of by rail, since an object 17 feet in width would not clear the tunnels and bridges of any railroad in the world. : Marvelous is the process of construction involved. Quartz sand is melted in an electric furnace at more ‘than 3,200 degrees Fahren- heit until it fuses into a rough heavy mass of desired size and thickness. Upon this base a coating of clear quartz is sprayed and the finished surface ground and polished to obtain the desired curvature and .then covered with a thin deposit of silver. So accurate is the curvature that it can be gauged within a few millionths of an inch! Thust man prepares to project himself further beyond the range of our solar system. What will he find? Evidence confirmatory of life on other planets? New galaxies not heretofore glimpsed by the eye of man? Qther suns and solar systems beyond the gravitational pull of our own golden orb? Surely Venus—26,000,000 miles away—and Mars—35,000,000 miles away—and Mercury— 47,000,000 miles away—will be only next-door neighbors compared to the stars that may be brought within range by a 200-inch mirror. Sir James Jeans, a distinguished scientist, in his latest book, “The Universe Around Us,” says recent measurements show that the near- est stars are at exactly a million times the distances of the nearest planets. As it is almost impossible to visualize a million, the mere statement that the stars are a million times as remote as the planets gives only a feeble indication of the immensity of the gap that divides the solar system from its nearest neighbors in space. “There are so many faint nebulae at the very limit of vision of the 100-inch telescope,” he remarks, “that it seems certain that a still larger telescope would reveal & great many more. The 200-inch telescope, having twice the aperature of the present 100-inch, ought to probe twice as far into space, and so may be expected to show about eight times as many nebulae as are now revealed, or about 16,- 000,000 nebulae.” That mankind is only in the beginning of space conquests is pointed out by Sir James who reminds us that, according to Einstein's original theory, even the 140,000,000 light- years through which we can range with our telescopes form only a small fraction of the whole of space—something like one part in a thousand million. “There is plenty of space still awaiting ex- ploration,” he adds. “Mankind, who has been possessed of telescopes for only 300 years out of the 300,000 of his residence on earth, could hardly hope to discover the whole of space in so short a time. Our astronomer explorers are moving from island to island in a small ar- chipelago which surrounds their home in space, but they are still far from circumnavigating the globe. And, just as the earliest geographers tried to estimate the size of the earth long before they thought of ecircumnavigating it, from the curvature of a small part of its sur- face, so astronomers are now trying to form estimates, although necessarily vague, of the size of the whole universe from the curva- ture of that part of it with which they are already acquainted.” Will the new telescope solve the mystery of Mars—those canals that have been the subject of so much conjecture, and whether the great red planet is dead or alive? Within the last few months Mars has been swinging “close” to earth—only 50,000,000 miles away—and astronomers have been hoping to get a new line on the Martian canals and the melting polar caps. Observations during the last decade have led many astronomical authorities to agree there must be some form of life on Mars, until now there are few who insist that such a supposition is “impossible.” Dr. William Pickering not only holds that Mars is inhabited by intelligent being, but in- sists the Martians have been attempting for some time to communicate with the earth. Discovery of the canals was made by the Italian astronamer, Schiaparelli, and Dr. Percival Low- ell, of Harvard, has held for 20 years o the theory that these canals were artifically cone structed by the inhabitants of Mars and in- dicated the presence there of an intelligent race with & .clvilimtion far in advance of our own. . I be possible to observe through it the light of a single candle 40,000 miles away—a dis- That a temperature obtains on Mars suffi- clent to support life has been proved by such an eminent authority as Dr. W. W. Coblentz, of the United States Bureau of Standards, who, using a delicate instrument known as the ther- mocouple, has found the temperature on Mars rises well above the freezing point and at times attains®a _readlng of 60 degrees—just a nice Spring day in Washington, D. C, or Chicago. Yet the nights on Mars must be extremely cold—many degrees below zero—and a rtian who could go coatless at noonday would have to “dig in” under heavy cover- ings to endure the night. Mars with withiin 35,000,000 miles of Earth in 1924 and will not be as close again until 2347 AD., but perhaps in the meantime, the giant 200-inch telescope will reveal within the next two or three years more about Mars than man has been able to learn in the last 300 years. NOTHER sphinx—the “Man in the Moon™— may have to yield his secrets before the ubiquitous eye of the new telescope. Once upon a time—not so long ago—the mystery of the moon had been solved. He was just a dead cold planet, his pock-marked face cov- ered with the craters of volcanoes that had ceased spouting very long ago. But now sci- ence is not so sure the moon is cold and dead, nor that those furrows on his placid face were inflicted by raining meteors, as some held. One who inclines to the view the moon is not altogether lifeless and inactive is Dr. Wil- liam Pickering. Silvery effects observed upon the peaks and within the shadows of the lunar orb are to this Harvard savant evidences of "ice and snow in processes of melting and freezing, and the ‘“variable spots” observable at times indications of organic life resembling a form of vegetation that flourishes while the sun shines and withers when the night falls, If one accepts the theory held by many then the moon is not only inactive but airless as well, although it once had an atmosphere. A modern Jules Verne, airplaning to the moon, could never return, for his machine would not lift off the surface of the Earth's satellite. Waldemar Kaempffert says: “Be- cause of its small size, the gravitational pull of the moon is only one-sixth that of the earth. You could jump over a barn on the moon, carry six times as much as on the earth and run six times as fast.” . Some time soon we may know more about the “Man in the Moon.” Three hundred years ago, when Galileo turned the first telescope upon him, his face was brought within 10,000 miles. The big reflector at the Mount Wilson observatory reduced this to 100 miles, and now a mirror that will bring that pallid face as close as 50 miles! ND what about Venus, the “Evening Staz,” twin of the earth, with plenty of light, heat and water? It is 30,000,000 miles nearer the sun than earth, and, because life is co- existent with heat and water, it has been the assumption of many scientists that surely there must be life of some kind on Venus. Perhaps the new telescope will be power- ful enough to pierce the veil that Venus weirs constantly. This veil has been assumed to'be steam clouds resulting from the effects of blistering heat of the sun upon the watery content of this planet. Whereas life on Mer- cury might be annihilated by the blazing in- ferno of the sun’s heat, Venus might be far enough away to shelter life; just as men on earth manage to live in the baked desert areas of the Sahara. Sir James Jeans thinks that Venus, with a mean temperature of some 60 degrees higher than that of the earth, is probably too hot for life at present. “But after 1,000,000 yesps,® he observes, “the temperature of Venus wil have fallen 40 degrees, and what the earth is now Venus may perhaps be somewhere be- tween one and two million years hence. ‘Whether life will then inhabit Venus we cam- not know, and it would be futile to guess, but there is at least a chance that, as the earth fails, Venus may step into its place.” Perhaps the new telescope will reveal more about the reported ninth planet, revolving outside the orbit of Neptune, nameless when its discovery was reported last month by Dr. V. M. Slipher of the Lowell Observatory. That a new planetary member of our solar system would be found was predicted years ago by Dr. Percival Lowell. “Planet X” is said to be larger than the earth and smaller than Neptune. That new star clusters and more “milky ways” may be discovered with the new tele- scope seems an inevitable conclusion. The' nearest stars, such as Proxima Centauri, are 25,000,000,000,000 miles away, or 4.27 light- years—the distance that light, traveling at 186,« 000 miles a second, takes 4.27 years to traverse, Farther away are such stars as Sirius, 51,000,« 000,000,000 miles, “or 8.65 light-years away. Yet, remote as is Sirius, science is able to tell us that this “Dog Star” has nearly twice the sun’s temperature and its luminosity is about 26 Wimes that of the sun, which would make the star’s diameter 58 per cent greater than that of the sun. It has nearly four times the sun’s volume, but only 2.45 times its weight. (Copyright, 1930.)