Interstellar space

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His Kingdom. We shall find them to be full of this wonderful medium, so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star, and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the Dog Star, the medium receives the impulses of those vibrations, and transmits them to distant worlds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before the operations which may be designated as molar can commence, a degree of aggregation must be reached far exceeding that which exists in those molecules which are the vehicles of luminiferous radiations. The particles constituting the ethereal matter of interstellar space must be supposed to be so minute and relatively far separated as not to exert any appreciable influence upon one another tending to produce molar motion or organization; a condition which is explained on the same grounds as the fact that one system in space exerts no appreciable influence upon another system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Objective: To draw from Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.35 light-years distant, its minerals, metals, elements and whatever useful substances could be moved across space, and store them nearby in the Solar System, accessible to all humankind.
The Task: Increase the Solar System's spunnel range, capability and capacity to teleport matter across interstellar space in a continuous flow and in sufficient quantities to satisfy the purpose of the Objective ”

“ 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 movements themselves of the massive celestial bodies which travel through space according to the laws of universal gravitation, are in all probability but the resultant of all these vibrations that are transmitted in all directions for billions and trillions of miles, through the interstellar space of the Universe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It thus appears that the upper strata, both of the sun and of the earth, consist of the lighter constituents which are largely removed from the lower atmosphere by their lightness, and no limit can be placed upon the distance to which these elements would travel from sun or earth into interplanetary space. What is true of sun and earth is doubtless true also of other planets and other suns, and it seems not impossible that even interstellar space may contain these and similar gases in an almost infinitely attenuated condition. ”

“ To make apparent any general absorption of radiation by the interstellar medium, it becomes necessary to investigate the properties of space far beyond the limits of the Galaxy and its outlying shells of sparsely distributed stars, and, crossing the immense voids of surrounding ether, to inquire whether they contain other galaxies of dimensions comparable with our own, and whether these afford any evidence of a gradual absorption of luminous energy by the intervening medium. ”

“ Not even normal space can be called uniform. It has been known for a long time that variations exist in the density of the interstellar gases. Just why they occur, what pattern they follow, if any, was for many years one of the major unsolved problems confronting astronomers and physicists. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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.... ”

“ But this monster—a thing now as big as the whole Solar System doubtless—was speeding through a light-year in a moment!
Futile figures! The human mind [119] can grasp nothing of the vastness of inter-stellar space. ”

“ But about the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the insufficiency of this view began to be fully recognized, and interplanetary space was conceived as tenanted by shoals of moving bodies exceedingly small in mass and dimension as compared with the planets. ”

“ Yes, we believe that the interplanetary space was well filled with these small bodies, circling around the sun, and when their multitudinous and eccentric orbits intercepted the orbits of the planets, they came within the attraction of these larger masses. ”

“ Circle after circle of fiery suns we were leaving behind, mass upon mass of swarming planets inside, but never on our space-charts showed any wandering dark-stars, or meteor-swarms, or vagabond, sunless worlds, all matter in this universe apparently having been swept up by the Andromedans and used as habitations for their races, inside the great sun-circles. ”

“ The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute, required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the galaxy! ”