Interstellar medium

“ The very existence of an ocean of ether enveloping the molecules of material bodies has been doubted or denied by many eminent physicists, though of course none have called in question the necessity for some interstellar medium for the transmission of thermal and luminous vibrations. This scepticism has been, I think, partially justified by the many difficulties encompassing the conception, into which, however, we need not here enter. That light and heat cannot be conveyed by any of the ordinary sensible forms of matter is unquestionable. ”

“ Therefore, to be strictly philosophical, one of these media must be done away with, and we may either assert that interplanetary and interstellar space is filled with electricity, or else it is filled with Aether, as it is much simpler to conceive of space being filled with one medium, than it is to suppose it to be filled with two media, which are absolutely identical in all their characteristic properties and functions. ”

“ From all the suns about us, our space-chart showed, great masses of interstellar ships were also flashing inward into the galaxy, the first exodus of the galaxy's people from the outer suns and worlds, driven inward by the fear of these mighty invaders from the outer void who had already destroyed the galaxy's fleet, and were preparing now to grasp all our universe. ”

“ Only a tiny point of light in a telescope on Earth, hardly more than that on the long days of our journey outward, we saw it now in some size and splendor, a huge cloud-belted world as large almost exactly as Uranus, outrivaled in the solar system only by it and by the two giants of Jupiter and Saturn. Over sixty times larger than our own Earth it was, a huge world spinning far out here at the solar system's very edge, the last outpost of that solar system with beyond it only the awful emptiness of interstellar space. ”

“ As the story went, there dwelt on a world -- and eventually on countless other worlds -- of outer space a mighty order of worm-like beings whose attainments and whose control of nature surpassed anything within the range of terrestrial imagination. They had mastered the art of interstellar travel early in their career, and had peopled every habitable planet in their own galaxy - killing off the races they found. ”

“ A being inhabiting such a comet, and having these interstellar journeys as the years of his existence, so that he could live through many of them, would have a wonderful insight into the economy of the stellar system. If his powers of conception as far exceeded ours as the range of his travels and the duration of his existence, he would be able to recognise the proportions of a large part of the stellar universe as clearly as we recognise the proportions of the solar system. ”

“ These investigations assume additional importance when we view them in connection with solar—I may even say stellar—physics, for evidence is augmenting in favor of the view that interstellar space is not empty, but is filled with highly attenuated matter of a nature such as may be put into our vacuum-tubes. Nor can the matter occupying stellar space be said any longer to be beyond our reach for chemical and physical test. ”

“ I think there can be no doubt that this research demonstrates the existence of a cosmic cloud pervading the stellar system. The fullness of interstellar space becomes a fact of observation and no longer a theoretical conjecture. ”

“ The stars are forgotten in the presence of this new constellation, and yet the tiniest of the sparks that seems to hide its light in the depths beyond would master these great planets and make gravitational slaves of them, as the sun does.
The planets are so conspicuous to our eyes, because of their relative nearness, that it is not easy for the beginner in such studies to realize how insignificant they actually are. But suppose that one could fly like a spirit away from the earth and the neighborhood of the sun, out into the deeps of interstellar space. ”

“ The solar system was home to us, would always be home to us, but never, I knew, would either of us be able to break away from the fascination of the great fleet's interstellar patrol, the flashing from sun to sun, the long silent hours in cosmic night and stellar glare. ”

“ So that by philosophical reasoning we are led to view the whole of the innumerable stars that flood interstellar space, not as so many individual and isolated units, that have no relation to each other, but rather as parts of one great system, which in its entirety may form in its ultimate unity one harmonious whole, a universe. ”

“ Later science, piling wonder upon wonder, handling radiant energy, packing compressed air for long excursions into outer space, sends out some skyship on tremendous errands of interstellar search. Days, weeks, they flit, with speed incredible, our earth a speck, our moon invisible, our sun a star among the others now ”

“ We earned the right to what we have. We were the first—first of all the races of the Galaxy to go into interstellar space. And we did it without mutation, without anything! Four generations that first voyage took. Four generations of children born in deep space, in a little ship crawling between the stars! No one else ever did that. No one else ever dared! And as for our wicked monopoly—it keeps the peace of the Galaxy. It keeps worlds alive that would have died. It brings wealth and comfort where they never were before. ”

“ If we can reach the great oncoming comet, can penetrate through its deadly coma to the solid nucleus at its center, can deflect that nucleus with our force-beams before the twelfth day ends, we will have turned the great comet aside, will have saved the galaxy itself from death. If we can not, the galaxy perishes and we perish with it. For we of the Interstellar Patrol, who have defended and guarded the ways of that galaxy for thousands upon tens of thousands of years, go out to the oncoming comet now not to return unless we can turn that comet aside and save our universe from doom! ”

“ Interplanetary space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would be sufficient. ”

“ This means that the raw material for the formation of solar systems is universally distributed throughout space; yet though we find that millions of suns stud the heavens, we also find vast interstellar spaces which show no sign of cosmic activity. ”

“ Whatever difficulties we may have in forming a consistent idea of the constitution of the ether, there can be no doubt that the interplanetary and interstellar spaces are not empty, but are occupied by a material substance or body which is certainly the largest and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge. ”

“ According to the ordinary view, we should suppose them to be in a state where all possibilities of internal movement were exhausted. At the temperature of interstellar space their constituent elements would be solid and inert; chemical action and molecular movement would be alike impossible, and their exhausted energy could obtain no replenishment unless they were suddenly rejuvenated by some celestial collision, or traveled into other regions warmed by newer suns. ”

“ The people of the dark star had entered the solar system quite unannounced, except that they had been seen in passing the orbit of Mars, for a ship had been out there in space, moving steadily out toward Neptune, and the great interstellar cruisers, flashing in across space, away from that frigid planet, had not seen the tiny wanderer. ”

“ Supplies of energy, stored and generated, must be established if extrasolar spacecraft are to survive in the depths of interstellar space far from convenient sources of power (such as stars) for a major portion of their lives. The technologies of command, control, and communication over stellar and galactic distances ultimately also must be developed. ”

“ Plants and creatures have their illnesses, things their malformations, planets no doubt their disasters: and since the fates of puissant things are those of futile things may we presume that there are mishaps also for the ordered whole? The analogies between stars and the microscopic dust of chemical particles impress themselves more and more upon our notice. Interstellar space seems proportionately no richer in movement or in matter than atomic space, and fancy, running beyond our physical powers of apprehension from one to other, falls ever into the same nescience. ”

“ We therefore conclude that beyond a certain distance there is a thinning out in the distribution of the stars; the stars visible in our telescopes form a universe having a more or less defined boundary; and, if there are other systems of stars unknown to us in the space beyond, they are, as it were, isolated from the universe in which we are. It is necessary however to emphasize that the foregoing argument assumes that there is no appreciable absorption of light in interstellar space. ”

“ To Lee it was only a shrinking inky void—an emptiness crowded with whirling little worlds all dwindling.... This crowded space! Often little points of star-dust had come whirling at the globe—colliding, bursting into pin-points of fire. Each of them might have been bigger than the Earth.
There was a time when it seemed that beneath the globe all the tiny stars were shrinking into one lens-shaped cluster. The Inter-stellar Universe—all congealed down there into a blob, and everywhere else there was just nothingness.... ”

“ At any rate I am alive, and my lifeboat, while somewhat damaged by an inept landing, is still sufficiently intact to serve as a shelter, and the survival kits are undamaged, which should make my stay here endurable if not pleasant ... and we are learning a great deal about our galaxy with the development of the interstellar drive—not the least of which is that authoritative opinion is mere opinion and far from authoritative.
This world on which I find myself is in every respect but one similar to Earth. There is no animate life—only plants. ”

“ Yes, necessarily, all inhabited Planets possess oxygenated atmospheric envelopes, but you are not to confound atmosphere with ether, which fills all interstellar space, and is substance, but so refined as to be imperceptible to physical sense.
Upon all the planets of our solar system, our glowing, radiant Sun sheds its life-preserving beams. Its magnetic waves, pouring across space, quicken into activity latent energies, thus making progress in all directions not only possible, but inevitable. ”

“ Yet, although the Solar System is many worlds with countless strange phenomena, still its scientific treasures are miniscule in comparison to those of the Galaxy. Interplanetary space travel is no longer a dream, but a reality? ”

“ The radiation that does reach the surface is so distorted by passage through the atmosphere that only incomplete observations can be made on the nature of other celestial bodies and the contents of interstellar space.
With the information derived from experiments and directed observations in the actual space environment, man will achieve a better understanding of the universe and of nature phenomena and life on the earth. ”

“ Since the beginning of recorded time, the earth, together with the other planets and the sun, has been speeding through interstellar space at the rate of 300,000,000 miles a year, without meeting or passing a single star. A ray of light, travelling with a velocity so great as to be scarcely measurable within the diameter of the earth's orbit, takes years to reach even the nearest star, centuries to reach those more distant. ”

“ That might be mind-hiding, but there was much more that he did not grasp. If his previous life were a myth, then Earth was non-existent. So was the Star Lady and the YMCA and the hope of interstellar travel. And instead of trying to reach the stars, he had been trying to communicate between the several inhabited planets by subradio. Did he know anything about sub-etheric wave propagation? ”

“ Accordingly, interstellar distances which are commonly said to be even without air or life of any kind are really an appearance possessed of a dynamism peculiar to itself. And this very force-appearance, constituting space, is that which makes it perceivable. For instance, let us say the space that exists between the earth and the moon, is not really empty nor does it have an existence prior to itself, but is a mode of dynamic appearance which is the cause of its own existence. ”

“ Super-constructions adapted to a dense medium in inter-planetary space—sometimes, by stresses of various kinds, they are driven into this earth's thin atmosphere——
Later we shall have data to support just this: that things entering this earth's atmosphere disintegrate and shine with a light that is not the light of incandescence: shine brilliantly, even if cold——
Vast wheel-like super-constructions—they enter this earth's atmosphere, and, threatened with disintegration, plunge for relief into an ocean, or into a denser medium. ”