These
stars, situated outside the central sphere, look somewhat like vagrant
bees buzzing round a dense swarm where the queen bee is sitting. Yet
while there is so much to suggest the operation of central forces,
bringing and keeping the members of the cluster together, the
attentive observer is also impressed with the idea that the whole
wonderful phenomenon may be the result of explosion. As soon as this
thought seizes the mind, confirmation of it seems to be found in the
appearance of the outlying stars, which could be as readily explained
by the supposition that they have been blown apart as that they have
flocked together toward a center. The probable fact that the stars
constituting the cluster are very much smaller than our sun might be
regarded as favoring the hypothesis of an explosion. Of their real
size we know nothing, but, on the basis of an uncertain estimate of
their parallax, it has been calculated that they may average
forty-five thousand miles in diameter -- something more than half the
diameter of the planet Jupiter. Assuming the same mean density,
fourteen thousand such stars might have been formed by the explosion
of a body about twice the size of the sun. This recalls the theory of
Olbers, which has never been altogether abandoned or disproved, that
the Asteroids were formed by the explosion of a planet circulating
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
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