The nearest star
they have been able to find is about 280,000 times the sun's
distance. A dozen or a score more are within 1,000,000 times that
distance. Beyond this all is unfathomable by any sounding-line yet
known to man.
The results of these astronomical measures are stupendous beyond
conception. No mere statement in numbers conveys any idea of it.
Nearly all the brighter stars are known to be flying through space
at speeds which generally range between ten and forty or fifty
miles per second, some slower and some swifter, even up to one or
two hundred miles a second. Such a speed would carry us across the
Atlantic while we were reading two or three of these sentences.
These motions take place some in one direction and some in
another. Some of the stars are coming almost straight towards us.
Should they reach us, and pass through our solar system, the
result would be destructive to our earth, and perhaps to our sun.
Are we in any danger? No, because, however madly they may come,
whether ten, twenty, or one hundred miles per second, so many
millions of years must elapse before they reach us that we need
give ourselves no concern in the matter. Probably none of them are
coming straight to us; their course deviates just a hair's-breadth
from our system, but that hair's-breadth is so large a quantity
that when the millions of years elapse their course will lie on
one side or the other of our system and they will do no harm to
our planet; just as a bullet fired at an insect a mile away would
be nearly sure to miss it in one direction or the other.
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