A given motion seems slower
the more distant the moving body; we have to watch a steamship on
the horizon some little time to see that she moves at all. Thus it
is that the unsolved problem of the motion of our sun is only one
branch of a yet more stupendous one: What mean the motions of the
stars--how did they begin, and how, if ever, will they end? So far
as we can yet see, each star is going straight ahead on its own
journey, without regard to its neighbors, if other stars can be so
called. Is each describing some vast orbit which, though looking
like a straight line during the short period of our observation,
will really be seen to curve after ten thousand or a hundred
thousand years, or will it go straight on forever? If the laws of
motion are true for all space and all time, as we are forced to
believe, then each moving star will go on in an unbending line
forever unless hindered by the attraction of other stars. If they
go on thus, they must, after countless years, scatter in all
directions, so that the inhabitants of each shall see only a
black, starless sky.
Mathematical science can throw only a few glimmers of light on the
questions thus suggested. From what little we know of the masses,
distances, and numbers of the stars we see a possibility that the
more slow-moving ones may, in long ages, be stopped in their
onward courses or brought into orbits of some sort by the
attraction of their millions of fellows.
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