II - A Preliminary Journey through Space and Time

Summary

We cannot ourselves go and find out what the sun, moon or stars consist of, but our huge telescopes will, in a sense, bring them near to us, which comes to much the same thing. Thus the whole of space lies open for our exploration, at any rate until we are confronted by opaque substances which no telescope can penetrate. Even then the calculations of the mathematician are ready to carry on the story; for instance, quite a lot of work has been done in recent years on the constitution of the interiors of the stars. Telescopic observation and mathematical theory between them furnish us with a sort of magic rocket which will take us almost anywhere in space we desire to go.

Out in Space

Let us enter this magic rocket and persuade someone to shoot us towards the sun. We need only start with speed enough to carry us a short distance away from the earth—about 7 miles a second will do—and the sun's huge gravitational pull will do the rest. It will drag us down into the sun whether we like it or not. If we start at 7 miles a second, the whole journey will take about ten weeks.

Even in the first few seconds of our flight, we notice strange changes; the whole colour-scheme of the universe alters with startling suddenness.