Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1882 — Dead Stars. [ARTICLE]

Dead Stars.

Taka the sands of the sea, the stars of heaven, says Sir John Lubbock, have ever been used as effective symbols of number, and the improvements in our methods of observation have added fresh force to our original impressions. We now know that our earth is but a fraction of one out of at least 75,000,000 ■worlds, But this is not all. In addition to the luminary heavenly bodies we cannot doubt that there are countless others, invisible to us from their greater distance, smaller size, or feebler light; indeed we know that there are many dark bodies which now emit no light or comparatively little. Thus in the case of Procyon, the existence of an invisible body is proved by the movement of the visible star. Again I may refer to the curious phenomena presented by Algol, a bright star in the head of Medusa. This star shines without change for two days and thirteen hours; then, in three hours and a half, dwindles from a star of the second to one of the fourth magnitude; and then, in another three and a half hours, reassumes its original brilliancy. These changes seem certainly to indicate the presence of an opaque body which intercepts at regular intervals a part of the light emitted by Algol. Thus the floor of heaven is not only “thick inlaid with the patines of bright gold,” but studded also with extinct stars—once probably as brilliant as our own sun, but now dead and cold, as Helmholtz tells us that our sun itself will be, some seventeen millions of years hence.