Side-Lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science

I. THE UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF ASTRONOMY II. THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE III. THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE IV. THE EXTENT OF THE UNIVERSE V. MAKING AND USING A TELESCOPE VI....

Not many years ago the planet Mars, which is the next one outside of us, was supposed to have a surface like that of our earth. Some parts were of a dark greenish gray hue; thes...

Accepting it as a fact that agencies do exist which travel from sun to planet and from star to star with a speed which beggars all our previous ideas, the first question that ar...

The consideration of this objection requires a closer inquiry as to what we are to understand by the form of our system. We have already pointed out the impossibility of assigni...

Intimately connected with the subject we have discussed is the question of the age of our system, if age it can be said to have. In considering this question, the simplest hypot...

There is another method of estimating the thickness with which stars are sown through space, and hence the extent of the universe, the result of which will be of interest. It is...

The easiest way to test this adjustment is to set the cell with the two glasses of the objective in it against a wall at night, and going to a short distance, observe the reflec...

The satellites of this planet, in their ever-varying phases, are objects of perennial interest. Their eclipses may be observed with a very small telescope, if one knows when to...

To the most refined telescopic observations, as well as to the naked eye, the stars seem all alike, except that they differ greatly in brightness, and somewhat in color. But whe...

When we come to Mars, we have more definite knowledge, and there seems to be greater possibilities for life there than in the case of any other planet besides the earth. The mai...

Careful experiment shows us that the region around every magnet is filled with magnetic force, strongest near the poles of the magnet, but diminishing as the inverse square of t...

One form of the modern non-Euclidian geometry assumes that a similar theorem is true for the space in which our universe is contained. Although two straight lines, when continue...

There is another feature of modern research the apprehension of which is necessary to the completeness of our view. A cursory survey of the field of science conveys the impressi...

It must, however, be added that the laws under which the impalpable particles of water in clouds agglomerate into drops of rain are not yet understood, and that opinions differ...

After a while a second party determines the longitude of Ogden from Cambridge. In the mean time, the longitude of Cambridge from Greenwich has been corrected, and we have a long...

Astronomy is more intimately connected than any other science with the history of mankind. While chemistry, physics, and we might say all sciences which pertain to things on the...

For more than a century Father Hell had been a well-known figure in astronomical history. His celebrity was not, however, of such a kind as the Royal Astronomer of Austria that...

There is, however, one science which admitted of the immediate application of the theorems of geometry, and which did not require the application of the experimental method. Ast...

Assembled, as we are, to dedicate a new institution to the promotion of our knowledge of the heavens, it appeared to me that an appropriate and interesting subject might be the...

I have left an important subject for the close. It belongs entirely to the older astronomy, and it is one with which I am glad to say this observatory is expected to especially...

Nor was activity confined to the observational side of the science. The same decade of which I speak was marked by the beginning of Professor Pierce's mathematical work, especia...

In this we are going in the direction of certain ideas of the ancients which modern discovery long seemed to have contradicted. In the infancy of the race, the idea that the hea...

The question of the tariff is, from a practical point of view, one of the most important with which our legislators will have to deal during the next few years. The widest diver...

The analogous conflict between the scientific use of language and the use made by some philosophers is found in connection with the idea of causation. Fundamentally the word cau...

Dr. Graham Bell, with a cheery optimism very pleasant to contemplate, has pointed out that the law I have just cited may be evaded by not making a larger machine on the same mod...