Recreations in Astronomy

Автор: Henry White Warren
Издательство: Chautauqua Press
Страниц: 320
Год: 1886
Размер: 8,00 МБ

ALL sciences are making an advance, but Astronomy is moving at the double-quick. Since the principles of this science were settled by Copernicus, four hundred years ago, it has never had to beat a, retreat. It is rewritten not to correct material errors, but to incorporate new discoveries.

Once Astronomy treated mostly of tides, seasons, and telescopic aspects of the planets; now these are only primary matters. Once it considered stars as mere fixed points of light ; now it studies them as suns, determines their age, size, color, movements, chemical constitution, and the revolution of their planets. Once it considered space as empty ; now it knows that every cubic inch of it quivers with greater intensity of force than that which is visible in Niagara. Every inch of surface that can be conceived of between suns is more wave-tossed than the ocean in a storm.