Dreams of an astronomer

by Camille Flammarion

VII. HEARTBEATS ACROSS SPACE

CHAPTER VII
HEARTBEATS ACROSS SPACE

ACROSS 92 million miles of space the magnetic pulses of the solar heart are transmitted to the earth, and they make the small and light compass needle, ever trembling and seeking its pole, vibrate on its pivot.

This magnetic needle does not remain fixed in the magnetic meridian, but oscillates every day to the right and left of the line, i.e. to the east and west. The greatest deviation is produced at about 8 a.m. The needle stops and returns to the magnetic meridian of the time (it varies from year to year), crosses it a little after 10 a.m., and continues to deviate towards the west, reaching its greatest deviation about 1.15 p.m. It then returns to the meridian, which it reaches about 6 p.m. and crosses to the east. It moves very slowly, with a slight oscillation between 8 and 10 p.m. to the east, attaining at 8 a.m. the greatest easterly deviation with which we began.

Such is the daily oscillation of the needle, a process expressive of the unknown and mysterious vital current which traverses our planet and manifests, so to speak, the soul of the earth.

This phenomenon is absolutely general and is observed on the entire globe, from the equator to the poles, in the same manner; the amplitude of the oscillation increases with the latitude but not proportionately; it only amounts to 1 or 2 minutes of arc in the tropics, to 9 minutes in France, and 7 minutes in Norway. This variation corresponds sensibly to the variation of temperature, the amplitude of which increases from the tropics to the poles. Heat, electricity, water-vapour, and barometric pressure are all associated with it.

There are certain perturbations, to be mentioned presently, to which some human beings are sometimes a little too sensive. We live enveloped in an invisible world.

The amplitude of this daily oscillation varies from day to day, from month to month, from year to year. If we take the mean of the observations of a whole year, we find that from one year to another it changes from a certain amount to double that amount and that this annual variation is regulated by a law. It is periodic, and the average period is eleven or twelve years.

For instance, in 1870 the oscillation was twelve minutes of arc and in 1878 it was six minutes. I take the figures for London, Prague, Munich, Rome, and Milan—not those for France, for no observations were made in that terrible year, or they were made badly, and I made many enemies by insisting upon them.

That year, 1870, was a maximum. There were other maxima, but not quite so great, in 1883, 1893, 1905, and in 1916. The cycle varies from ten to thirteen years.

Now, this behaviour of the magnetic needle corresponds exactly to the state of health of the Sun, i.e. its activity or the number of sunspots or whirlpools which indicate it as well as its gigantic flames, protuberances, faculæ, and the various manifestations of its radiating power.

There was a very considerable maximum of sunspots in 1870. Another maximum occurred in 1883 and another in 1905, but the latter were less marked than that of 1870. In 1918 another very well defined maximum occurred.

Minima of sunspots, protuberances, and faculæ were observed in 1878, 1889, 1901, and 1913. Now, these maxima and minima correspond exactly with the variation of the compass needle, as is shown in the tables and curves published in my Astronomie Populaire.

If curves are traced for solar activity on the one hand and magnetic oscillation on the other hand, it is found that the two curves are absolutely parallel. Science has been able to trace this parallelism very far, as far back indeed as the eighteenth century, and it is found to include the aurora borealis, which is a magnetic phenomenon. The concordance is evident and absolutely incontestable.

Thus there constantly emanates from the Sun a force different from light and heat, a force we do not perceive with our senses and which places our small and mobile planet in constant communication with our central star, which is more than a million times greater in volume.

The Sun sometimes experiences violent expansions, perturbations, tempests, and magnetic storms. The smallest disturbances which happen in our formidable star are transmitted to us.

For instance: the years 1904 to 1908 were very strange so far as the Sun was concerned. Instead of the single maximum which is usually observed, there were two maxima, one in 1905 and another in 1907, 1906 being less active. The curve traced to represent the number of sunspots shows two peaks, in 1905 and 1907 respectively, with a depression in 1906. It is the same with terrestrial magnetism: maxima in 1905 and 1907, with a slight weakening in 1906.

When I discovered this unexpected coincidence for 1906, several sceptics were greatly surprised. Yet it is true.

It was the same when I accused the Sun of being the author of the interruption of telephonic and telegraphic communication on September 25, 1909, which took place over the whole of France, in all Europe, and throughout the world. The telephone girls were unjustly blamed and the telegraph engineers were equally innocent. Why had no newspaper thought of it? Perhaps because politics are cultivated more than science in the papers of our unbalanced days. I do not accuse our country more than another, the English, German, American, Australian, and other editors having been equally astray concerning the cause of the perturbation.

On that day the intensity of the earth-currents which produced the breakdown was 50 million amperes, whereas the instruments work regularly with 10 to 12 milliamperes. The whole terrestrial globe had been plunged into a magnetic field of great intensity, into a veritable dynamic ocean originating in a solar torrent. A large group of sunspots surrounded by faculæ had arrived on the eastern limb of the solar globe on September 17, and had gradually advanced towards the central meridian of the solar hemisphere turned towards us by the Sun’s rotation. On the 19th, this group had become much larger. The spectroscope had indicated violent eruptions. The enormous group of sunspots was visible to the naked eye and numerous photographs of it had been taken at the Juvisy Observatory. It passed the central meridian of the Sun on the morning of September 24 and continued its course towards the western limb, disappearing from sight on October 1. The magnetic perturbation which struck our planet arrived 30 hours after the passage of this group of sunspots across the central meridian of the solar hemisphere facing us.

We had already, on October 31, 1903, observed a similar cosmic phenomenon, and previously on November 18, 1882, and August 3, 1872. Even before that date a similar event took place on September 1, 1859. But memory is short, and in any case astronomical ignorance is universal.

The magnetic link, invisible but powerful, joins our Earth to the central body of the solar system. Pœebus Apollo holds us in the hollow of his hand at a distance of 92 million miles, and we feel his pulse as he feels our feeble heart-beats. It is not only gravitation, nor only light, nor yet only heat, which throws a celestial bridge from the Sun to the Earth; it is also electricity; it is also magnetism; it is a force still unknown and unexplained which no doubt maintains communication between all the worlds. For the ethereal wave touches Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune as it touches us, and if we could utilise it we could communicate with our neighbours in the heavens.

Interstellar magnetism! At each stage in the advance of science new horizons open out, unexpected perspectives reveal themselves, enlarging the field of our conquest over nature, but what we do know already is a mere nothing in comparison with what we are yet to know.

What is the nature of the wave or substance which leaves the Sun and reaches the Earth to produce those agitations of the magnetic needle, those magnetic storms and auroræ boreales?

Contemporary physics has been busy for twenty years about ions, electrons, and electric particles. The great perturbations described above are supposed to be due to the arrival in the upper atmosphere of torrents of electrons projected by the Sun and impinging upon the Earth with a speed of several thousand miles per second. The phenomenon is most intense when these emanations from the day-star hit the Earth directly. When they pass on one side, nothing out of the way happens. It may be that the torrent projected in a certain direction by the Sun on September 24 filled space in the direction of projection, and that our globe, travelling along its orbit at 67,000 miles an hour, only passed through that region on the following day.

Ions and electrons, those convenient goblins of present-day physics, do they exist? Nobody has ever seen them. Perhaps they are only ingenious interpretations. What does certainly exist is electric force. We may also think of the repelling force exerted by the Sun, which blows so strongly upon the nuclei of comets and produces tails several million miles long and always in the direction opposed to the Sun. Electricity plays a great part in the appearance, the illumination, and the dislocation of comets’ tails, as we see nearly every year in the photographs taken at the Juvisy Observatory and which make such picturesque and suggestive revelations (it even plays a part in organic cells and among microbes).

Whatever may be the real nature of the force in action, it is certain that the magnetic link differs from universal gravitation, but it is no less intimate and all-pervading. The twin forces of gravitational and magnetic attraction between worlds can only be likened to the universal force of love, which attracts souls towards each other.