FOOTNOTES:
[14] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 98.
[15] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 101.
[16] Winchell, “Walks and Talks in the Geological Field,” p. 99.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUN’S LIGHT AND HEAT.
I conceive that one reason why scientists believe in the nebular hypothesis is because of their knowing that heat consumes. One cannot contemplate a burning object without perceiving that it grows smaller and smaller; therefore why should not the sun with its flaming hydrogen, rising sometimes to a height of 200,000 miles, consume the sun? It is claimed but 1/2300 millionth of its force reaches earth, and yet it is asserted that the sun could melt 287,200,000 cubic miles of ice per second without quenching its heat.[17] From what we know appertaining to heat, how can we think it is otherwise than reducing the sun’s volume?
Yet we must remember there are other things as difficult of comprehension. We see the mist rising from the ocean and forming into clouds that drift through the heavens when moved by the winds, and we might well believe in future years the oceans will be drained of their contents. But when we learn that all those waters pass into the sky but to condense and fall to earth, and then through streams again reach the oceans, we can readily understand that they may be the same to-day as when created; nor conceive how it will be otherwise to the end of time.
Again, when a boiler of water seems wasting through invisible steam, expanded 1800 times its original bulk, we might well believe it is being destroyed only we have learned all that steam in some manner cools and forms again the first element H2O, not one particle being lost. When any body is burned and we see the flames ascending into the air, we say it is being destroyed, for so it seems; but chemists tell us the form alone is changed and the weight after burning identical with its first weight; showing thereby that not one particle of earth can either be formed or destroyed, but simply changed from combinations of molecules to simple molecules, or vice-versa.
We see earth everywhere surrounded by an atmospheric sea, not of oxygen and hydrogen, but of oxygen and nitrogen—four-fifths being nitrogen—and were the other fifth the same no life could exist in it. Scientists tell us this atmosphere extends from one to two hundred miles into the sky, but is densest at the earth’s surface; and as one ascends rapidly rarifies so that at a height of a few miles no life can exist. From what is known of winds and cyclones one might expect the atmosphere would be torn from earth, especially as earth moves at the rate of 1100 miles per minute, and revolves on its axis about the same number of miles per hour. One would suppose, at least, that which is highest and thinnest must be left behind in space; yet we cannot learn since Earth’s creation that any of it has been thus lost.
Furthermore, when we contemplate earth’s delicate poise of forces,—“No balance turning to 1/1000 of a grain being more delicate,”—we may well believe the sun is the same to-day as two thousand years ago; for it could not have wasted any of its substance without having thereby affected the gravitation of the earth. In some manner, like the waters that rise from ocean and return again; like the steam, and burning bodies that are not lost; and like the atmosphere the earth holds, the sun may be also holding its every atom of heat; though changed, perhaps, in some of its combinations. We must remember that the sun’s rays, as they pass into space, can be seen by us only when the vibrations are between 400 and 800 trillions per seconds, for above or below that number they are invisible to human sight. Were these rays condensed, or in some manner changed, making as great a difference between them as there is difference between the vapors rising from the ocean to the clouds, and the streams returning to them; they might before their condensation, or change, give different vibrations from the ones they would afterward give. While the heat escaping from one gave light the others returning might be invisible to us. It is evident that were the sun a dark object it would be invisible to us, as would the moon without the sun’s rays resting upon it.
May not all light be restored to the sun, and thus keep up its supply of heat—as well as vapors be returned to ocean—instead of supposing it is caused by contraction? The only sounds that our ears can detect are vibrations between 16.5 and 38,000 per second and unquestionably all above 38,000, even up to and above those of light, would give sound had we the faculties to detect it. Had we then the right senses all vibrations below 400 trillions or above 800 trillions per second would be visible as well as the vibrations that give us light.
Though it is difficult to understand, from all the materials that we are familiar with, how a fire can burn without its substance being consumed, we should remember the bush that astonished Moses by burning without consuming. As little can we conceive that there is a great globe of fire keeping up its flame and heat for thousands of years without being diminished. The sun, although seeming to us small as a ball, is visible at a distance of over 90,000,000 miles. Could we conceive of any object, even though a million times larger than earth, being seen by us at that distance only from the fact that it is thus daily seen, and apparently is the same size as when our eyes first rested upon it. Even these visible truths are beyond our conception, and knowing that it is so we should feel that any truth, however astonishingly great, may be possible.
When we realize that without the sun’s heat and light we ourselves could not here exist; that it has power to lift the waters that are unfit for man’s use and restore them again in a purified state; and power to produce food for him both in the animal and vegetable kingdom, the truth is not lessened. Were the sun nearer the earth or farther away all life would here be destroyed; and should any one of all the suns in space vary the least in its orbit it would be the destruction of earth. Yet as far as we have learned no sun has ever come within twenty trillions of miles to interfere with our globe, and from all the above facts we may well believe there are truths concerning the sun’s light and heat that we do not yet understand.
That the ocean keeps up its supply of radiation, and as far as we see never diminishes; that the heat from volcanoes and all other fires of earth does not escape from earth’s hold, but is returned in new forms to be used again; leads us to question whether earth’s heat passes beyond its own atmosphere. The heat of our great solar light may likewise be equal to that of Adam’s day and continue thus unwasted until the end of time, or until its great Author sees fit to change it.
While astronomers tell us that the diminution of the sun’s diameter 1/10,000 part would liberate heat enough to supply its current expenditure for about 2,000 years, they have also shown that it could be supplied by the friction meteors would cause by rushing into the sun; provided that the number falling into it in one year equalled the moon’s volume.[18] We can know little of the number there may be, for only that they occasionally fall into our atmosphere and are instantly burned, we should not know of their existence. But it is said that every 33 years we pass through a shoal of them 100,000 miles broad, and many thousand times greater in length, and that it has been thus for centuries. Prof. Newton estimates the average number of meteors that traverse our atmosphere daily, large enough to be visible to the eye on a dark night, is 7,500,000. With the telescope-meteors added, the number is increased to 400 millions. As the sun is more than a million times the size of the earth should the number falling into it be increased at the same rate it might reach 150 quadrillions daily, 170,000 falling on every square mile of the sun’s surface.
Again; it is stated by Sir Robert Ball that a body of a pound’s weight falling from a great distance into the sun, might, in the course of its friction through the sun’s atmosphere, generate as much heat as would be produced by the combustion of many times its own weight of coal, if consumed under the most favorable circumstances. Is there sufficient evidence yet given to prove that this is not a source of the sun’s light and heat instead of contraction? The moon, we will say, contains 5,000 millions of cubic miles. If the sun’s radius was 100 millions of miles, or extended as far as earth, it would have a surface of 120,000 trillions of square miles. Place the earth on its surface and it would occupy less than 1,000 millionth of that surface, allowing it to settle into it one-half. The moon’s volume if spread over earth’s surface would cover it but twenty-five miles deep. If then, the same quantity of material were spread over the sun while reaching out to earth it would be covered by it less than 1/300 of an inch in depth; so thinly, in fact that an apple-skin would be thick in comparison. Are we prepared to say this amount does not actually accumulate year by year on the surface of earth, for we are told: “The world is thus pelted on all sides day and night, year after year, century after century, by troops and battalions of shooting stars of every size, from objects not much larger than grains of sand up to mighty masses which can only be expressed in tons. In the lapse of ages our globe must thus be gradually growing by the everlasting deposit of meteoric debris. Looking back through the vista of time past, it becomes impossible to estimate how much of the solid earth may not owe its origin to this celestial source.”[19]
But as the sun does not extend out to earth let us see how deeply the moon’s volume would cover a globe one million miles in diameter having a surface of three trillions of square miles. Spread the moon’s volume upon this and we find it would cover the sun about nine feet deep. This being for one year it would be only at the rate of nine inches per month, or one-third of an inch per day. Snow would cover earth to that depth in half an hour, while a mist or dew could cover it in about twenty-four hours. Thus a constant deposit of meteoric dust even like dew would give to the sun a volume equal to the moon’s in about one year. With these facts before us let us notice what is actually observed about the sun’s corona, so plainly seen when the sun is totally eclipsed; for can that corona be less than the dew that falls upon earth if it is thus visible at a distance of more than ninety millions of miles? We are told, “The corona is a vast shell of unknown vapors in a highly attenuated state many thousands of miles thick, and observed to extend at least one-half a degree from what is ordinarily taken to be the visible edge of the sun.” Is it, then, too much to believe it is helping to keep up the light and heat of the sun? It is further asserted that its depth is nearly 100,000 miles and “consists of reflected light, sent to us from dust particles or meteoroids giving new densities and rarities that cause the changeful light. Whether they are there by constant projection, and fall again to the sun, or are held by electric influence, or by force of orbital revolution, we do not know.”[20]
The same author quotes from Professor Pierce: “The heat which the earth receives directly from meteors is the same in amount which it receives from the sun by radiation, and that the sun receives five-sixths of its heat from the meteors that fall upon it.” Prof. Langley has stated that no more than half the sun’s radiant force reaches earth, the remainder being absorbed by the atmosphere and dust which floats it; and that much of the absorption must be accomplished by the cosmic matter existing beyond the atmosphere, while that matter must be more accumulative in the neighborhood of the sun. Is it not reasonable then, to suppose that the meteoric, or cosmic dust, falling into the sun is equivalent to a dew that would cover it one-third of an inch in 24 hours; for why should not the sun attract this little amount of matter when it has power to draw worlds eighty times larger than earth and nearly 3,000 million miles distant? Astronomers do not question the power of this attraction, then if the sun can draw in one meteor may it not easily draw all that are needed to supply its heat? for the earth’s orbit around the sun is like a thread. In that orbit it passes swarms of meteors, and thus of the number that may exist in the vast circumference about our sun we have little real knowledge.
If it is true that earth receives but a portion of the fearful hydrogen heat that flames in the sun’s photosphere, one-half being restrained that it does not reach the earth, may not the rest as easily be withheld in the far distant space and lie within the sun’s power of gravitation?
While the sun is the light and heat of earth and all the planets and their satellites,—as a mother caring for her children,—may not all these planets, with their atmospheres and powers of gravitation, help return to her what she so freely bestows upon them? Is it more difficult to believe this than that we are daily using heat stored for ages in earth by this same wondrous sun whose light and heat, if more or less, would work the destruction of man?
When we think of the hundreds of millions of years ago that Saturn and Jupiter were a portion of the sun’s body we should, according to the nebular theory, expect that those bodies would long since have cooled. But if Saturn is to-day a hot, gaseous body of not one-thousandth part the sun’s mass, nor of an equal density with it, how does it happen that it is not cold? As astronomers cannot tell the years it may continue thus hot possibly there may be something about light and heat that is not yet understood? We are told by Dr. Huggins: “The green coronal line has no known representative in terrestrial substances, nor has Schuster been able to recognize any of our elements in the other lines of the corona.”
It has been said that “the sun cannot shine forever;” why not? Let us imagine two persons in a room making an agreement that thereafter but one of them shall be in the room at the same time, for as one enters it the other will immediately leave. This they might agree to do every hour, day, year, or millions of years even, could they exist here, and thus keep it up forever. Likewise if the sun’s rays in some manner keep returning to the sun, they may exist forever. For if true that “a particle traveling in a straight line with uniform speed in the same direction is never able to get beyond a certain limited distance from the original position, to which it will every now and then return,” let us apply the theory to a ray of light and see what the result will be. One would think that a ray of light moving through a cold space would certainly cool in one minute, but we find that such is not the case; for this ray of light is the same when it reaches earth as when it started upon its journey. The eighth minute it moved as fast and was identically the same as when first projected from the sun. Thus it ever remains flying through space at the rate of 11 millions of miles each minute, keeping the same speed as long as it can be detected by human invention, and on reaching the sun, its starting point, it must be the same in light, heat, and energy as when it left,—be that time hundreds, thousands, or millions of years,—and is ready to repeat its voyage forever; why not? If for every ray of light that goes out from the sun the same number enters, this process must forever keep the sun supplied. Is it not true of the waters of the Niagara Falls that no more flows down its stream than has already ascended to the clouds in vapor, then may it not be equally true of the sun’s light and heat?
The gravitation that applies to bodies may also apply to light, and give to it as much greater an orbit than that of comets as comets have greater than that of the planets. Though light may have a vastly greater ellipse it may in the end return to the sun which projects it, to be again projected. When we think of the molecules in space that everywhere seem to possess the same properties, and the vastness of that space, we are ready to conceive that light may have the same unending properties.
Again, in reference to the stars burning out, or growing old—as is believed by some to be the case with our own sun and other suns in space, because of their varied colors and appearances—the following thoughts may be suggested. At times our sun seems to have dark spots upon its surface, while in other places great prominences are observed. This being the case who believes that everywhere the sun emits the same light and heat; and if not what must be the effect at our distance from the sun whether a dark spot, or a great projection of flaming hydrogen is directly before us? Let us imagine a sphere, with the sun for its centre, that has a radius reaching out a little way beyond earth, and a surface that might contain 1200 millions of bodies like our earth. Supposing earth to occupy, in turn, each of these 1200 millions of places we cannot believe the sun to have the same appearance from each of them. We are told by Prof. Ball that masses of vapor are frequently expelled from the interior of the sun with a speed of from 300 to nearly 1,000 miles a second, although the fact would hardly be credible only that the spectroscope enables the observer to actually witness the ascent of these solar prominences at a distance of more than ninety millions of miles. Now from these facts would one suppose that the sun could appear the same when viewed from each of those 1,200 millions of places?
When observed from a position directly facing the dark spots the sun would seem very different from the same body viewed from a place facing the solar heights whose streams of fire were moving toward one at the rate of from 500 to 1,000 miles per second. Or let us form a sphere with the next nearest sun, Alpha Centauri, as its centre, and a radius of ten trillions of miles. In such a sphere we might place 1,210 quadrillions of earths. Who believes, that were that number of bodies of earth’s size placed about the star Alpha Centauri, to each of them it would appear alike, especially if it were like our sun with dark spots and prominences upon its surface? It would seem that the light received from it might be so variable that different ages would be attributed to the sun, according to the position from which it was observed. Our own sun when seen from different points of the earth’s surface—as, for instance, from the arctic region or torrid zone—does not look to us exactly the same. A very little change in the atmosphere affects the appearance of the sun as we daily view it, and the pictures of the corona taken at different places—or even at the same place with different instruments—are found on careful examination to present quite different appearances.
Once again, assume the sun’s diameter to be one million of miles with a surface of three trillions of square miles which if two miles in depth would have twice that number of cubic miles, i. e., six trillions of cubic miles. Imagine then a sphere with a radius of three billions of miles from the sun’s centre, that is one reaching beyond the planet Neptune, and we have a sphere containing 108 octillions of cubic miles in volume, which divided by six trillions gives us 18,000 trillions of centuries, providing the mass has contracted six trillions of cubic miles each century. It might be said that when the sun had 6,000 millions of miles for its diameter it would have contracted more than six trillions of miles a century; but we must remember that it is a law of spherical, gaseous volumes that they revolve swifter and swifter, and grow hotter and hotter as they contract. Hence, the sun to-day being smaller is revolving more rapidly and contracting faster than ever before; though it is not detected by us. As its diameter and volume must have been larger when it contracted more slowly its decrease could not have been more rapid, if as rapid as now, and at the rate of no more than six trillions of miles each century. If this be true we cannot have over estimated the number of centuries that the sun has been contracting. Then from these suppositions if the sun’s energy has not waned in all these 18,000 trillions of centuries, it seems probable that the Power that has caused it to glow thus long may continue to give to it an energy that shall flow on with unabated strength throughout the coming ages.
As the idea of the burning-out of the sun is based upon the theory that the sun formerly was larger than now and has been reduced to its present size by contraction—although we can in no manner detect that change—the theory may still be questionable. It seems more agreeable to believe there will be no limit to the sun’s bright radiance. Its unbounded flow of light throughout all the years of past time should give us assurance (until there is certain evidence to the contrary) that it is as capable of existence, and as able to resist the inroads of time, as the water in our oceans, the earth upon which we live, the air surrounding earth, and the ether above; all of which we feel exist and are preserved by the Powerful Hand and All-Seeing Eye of an Almighty Creator. It really matters little to us whether or not the sun is burning-out, for we could live, did that Creator so order, as well without as with it. There are creatures better adapted to the arctic seas than to the waters of the torrid zone; there are others that provide not for themselves but lie dormant through the cold winter months; there are birds and animals that see by night as well as by day; and our sight could as easily be adjusted for vision in one vibration per second as to make it dependent on 400 trillions of vibrations.
Still our natures are such that what would be harmful in our present state we prefer should not happen even in the years to come; and so continue to believe in the sun’s endurance, although there may be some things that give credence to the idea that destruction will come to it in the future. We can understand that one ignorant of vaporization might sit at the foot of Niagara Falls and say, “Surely there cannot be water above to supply much longer this enormous, swiftly-flowing volume.” In a like manner we are unable with the sun 90,000,000 miles distant, to detect any diminution of its light or heat; and judging only of the condition it was in 2,000 years ago by its power of gravitation, and its hold upon the planet-worlds—as evidenced by the transits of Venus and the eclipses—we are led to believe that, wise as men are, they do not yet fully comprehend all the laws relating to this wonderful Solar Energy.
