The first step in his discovery came when by examination of the globular clusters he discovered that the stars about us extended much farther into space than we had previously thought, and that most of the farthest of them were on one side of us. This led him to believe that we were not the center of the universe, but that we were, on the contrary, off center, and that the Milky Way was so full of stars because we were looking through the center. So the Shapley system, or the galactic system, as it is called, held that we were one of countless stars which go to form a system much in the shape of a giant millstone. Determining the thickest part of the Milky Way, Dr. Shapley then determined that the star Sagiltarins was the approximate center of this galactic system, and that we on earth are travelling around Sagittarius at the rate of 120 miles per second.
Astronomical Distances Increased
Dr. Shapley's most recent research has been concerned with variable stars in the large Magellanic cloud. This cloud seems to be another system rather like the one in which we are whirled about Sagittarius. Dr. Shapley has found, by examination of the Cepheids variables in this cloud that the light from certain ones waxes and wanes, the period which the change in brightness takes having a direct relation, through the average brightness, to the distance of the Cepheids from us. In this way he has calculated that the large Magellanic cloud is 86,000 light years away from us, a light year being the distance that a ray of light travels in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. In the Kapteyn Universe, it was held that there was no star over 35,000 light years away.
Professor Lundmark in his paper told of his exploration among the spiral nebulae which are at a distance of 500,000 to 150,000,000 light years from the earth. Although these nepulae are smaller in themselves by much than our own galactic system, nevertheless they seem to come in groups of thousands or so, and Lundmark has advanced the important theory that each group of these comprises a separate system such as ours.
Limit Beyond Human Mind
Both these papers, Shapley's and Lundmark's, are of vast importance in a reorganization of our idea of the extent of space, fixing a limit of which is as yet beyond human comprehension, according to Lundmark, who reports that the spiral nebulae which he has been examining are by no means the farthest objects from earth in the universe.
Dr. Harian T. Stetson, director of the Perkins Observatory at Ohto Wesleyan University, for which the mirror is being cast at the Bureau of Standards, discussed land-tides similar in origin to the tides of the ocean. That the earth's crust actually shifts as a result of the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth is the theory advanced by Dr. Stetson.