Relativity in the Remotest Heavens

Abstract

THE study of pathology, not to mention heredity, has long been leading into the inconceivably small: now astronomers with their giant telescopes are leading us towards the infinitely great. The analysis of the statistics of the spiral nebulæ, remotest of things that we know, has recently been leading the Harvard astronomers (H. Shapley in Proc. U.S. Nat. Acad.) to conclusions that invite inferences. It appears that these objects, more numerous perhaps than all the visible stars, are distributed not uniformly, but rather as including humps or patches, and with complete extinction along our own Milky Way where alone the haze would absorb their light.