Word: centauri
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Until 1915 the bright star Alpha Centauri was steadfastly regarded by astronomers as the sun's nearest stellar neighbor...
...distance from the sun is 4.3 light years -about 25 trillion miles. In 1915 Dr. Robert T. A. Innes of Johannesburg discovered, by parallax observations,* that a faint star near Alpha Centauri was only 4.16 light-years away. For 23 years, up to last week, that star, appropriately called Proxima Centauri, held rank as the No. 1 solar neighbor. Last week, from the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, it was announced that another faint star, Wolf 424† appears to be only 3.7 light-years distant. This is so close that a train traveling a thousand...
...nearest known neighbor. It may be a double star, in which case the combined light of the two components would make it appear closer than it actually is. Parallax measurements requiring a year or more will be necessary to settle the contest between Proxima Centauri and Wolf...
...Proxima Centauri, the sun's nearest neighbor among the stars, is 25 trillion miles away from Earth. Even if it had a family of planets, no telescope could reveal them. According to Sir James Jeans, a star which has a brood of planets must be an exceedingly rare thing in the sky; the solar system may be unique among the billions of stars which constitute the Milky Way galaxy. To Sir James it is a simple matter of mathematical probability. He has done much to propagate the "tidal theory" of the solar system's origin which is probably...
...long before the first men appeared on Earth. Light from the blow-up started toward Earth at 186,000 miles per second, sped on for 7,000,000 years. Thirty thousand years ago it reached the fringe of the Milky Way. Four years ago it was inside Proxima Centauri, Earth's nearest star. Going fast enough to circle Earth seven times in a second, the light took only 5 hr. 30 min. to cross the outer solar system...