[ginp-users] in the ca

[Dillion S. <whe...@us...>]

Th to astronomers, and not January, as you might suppose.
Perhaps you will learn to
recognize all the constellations in the Zodiac one day; a few of them,
such as the Bull and the Heavenly Twins, you know already if you have
followed this chapter. CHAPTER XII WHAT THE STARS ARE MADE OF How can we
possibly tell what the stars are made of? If we think of
the vast oceans of space lying between them and us, and realize that we
can never cross those oceans, for in them there is

no air, it would seem

to be a hopeless task to find out anything about the stars at all. But

even though we cannot traverse
space ourselves, there is a
messenger that
can, a messenger that needs no air to sustain him, that moves more
swiftly than our feeble minds can comprehend,
and this messenger brings
us tidings of the stars--his
name is Light. Light tells us many marvellous things, and not the least
marvellous is the news he gives us of the workings of another force, the
force of gravitation. In some ways gravitation is perhaps more wonderful
than light, for though light speeds across airless space, it is stopped
at once by any opaque substance--that is to say, any substance not
transparent, as you know very well
by your own shadows, which
are caused by your bodies stopping the light of the sun. Light striking
on one side of the earth does not penetrate through to the other,
whereas gravitation does. You remember, of course, what
the force of gravitation is, for we read about that very early in this
book. It is a mysterious attraction existing between all matter. Every

atom pulls every other atom towards itself