Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space and time -- Fiction
QUÆRENS.. To return to the transmission of light in space. Does
not light lose itself at last? Does the aspect of the Earth remain
eternally visible, and never, on the contrary, diminish in proportion
to the square of distance, thus becoming finally annihilated?
[Sidenote: The word end applied to space meaningless]
LUMEN. Your expression "at last" is without meaning, because there is
no end in space.
Light becomes attenuated, it is true, with distance, the scenes become
less vivid, but nothing is lost entirely. Any number, whatever it may
be, perpetually reduced by half, for example, can never become equal
to zero. The Earth is not visible to all eyes at a certain distance.
Nevertheless it still exists, even though it may not be seen by all;
and only spiritual sight can see it.
Besides, the image of a star, borne upon the wings of light, goes into
the unfathomable depths of the mysterious abysses of space.
[Sidenote: Vast regions exist without stars.]
Vast regions exist in space without stars, regions decimated by time,
whence worlds have been successively removed by the attraction of
exterior suns. The image of a star in crossing these dark abysses,
would be in a condition analogous to that of a person, or object, that
the photographer had forgotten and left in the _camera_.
It is not impossible that such images encounter in these vast spaces an
obscure star (celestial mechanics state the existence of many such) in
a special condition whose surface (formed perhaps of iodine, if one is
to credit spectral analysis) would be sensitised, and capable of fixing
upon itself the image of this far-off world.
Thus terrestrial events might be printed upon a dark globe. And if this
globe turns upon itself, like other celestial bodies, it would present
successively its different zones to the terrestrial image, and would
thus take a sort of continuous photograph of successive events.
[Sidenote: Images of this world's events photographed spirally upon
other globes in space.]
Following moreover, in ascending, or descending, a perpendicular
line to its equator, the line where the images were reproduced would
no longer be described in a circle, but in a spiral; and after the
first movement of rotation was finished, the new images would not
coincide with the old ones, nor superimpose them, but would follow
above and below. The imagination could now suppose that this world is
not spherical, but cylindrical, and thus see in space an imperishable
column around which would be engraved the great events of the world's
history.
I have not myself seen this realisation. It is so short a time since I
left the Earth, that I have barely done more than glance superficially
at these celestial marvels. Before long I shall seek to verify this
fact, and see if its reality does not form a part of the infinite
richness of the astral creations.
QUÆRENS. If the ray which leaves the Earth is never _destroyed_,
master, our actions are then eternal?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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