Jupiter has the same characteristics in diameters. The mean, 85,000 miles; equatorial, 87,800; polar, 82,200, a difference of 5,600 miles, which means the same influences and same reason to make it hollow. While 1,233 times as large as the Earth, its density of substance is only 301 times as much. Here we have the two largest planets, perhaps yet in their period of development for being inhabited, in very like form relatively as the Earth.
It may not be ill-timed to assert at this point the belief that all planetary bodies are hollow and cool, not one in a molten condition or giving out heat, but only generating heat in their own atmospheres, thus giving out light, which we, in our ignorance, attribute to a mass of intense heat or a globe in combustion. Such a condition seems unreasonable to exist in a body traveling unlimited space, which is cold beyond any degree of ascertaining. The sun is subject to the same conditions as the Earth, as far as obtaining heat, and this work will claim that we receive no more direct heat from the Sun than from Mars or Venus.
Taking the first proposition, that in the absence of friction there can be no heat or light, the assumption is that the Sun generates its heat and light by its wonderful revolution in its own atmosphere. With a diameter of 860,000 miles, and revolving in 25.38 days, the Sun is moving through its atmosphere a mile in eight-tenths of a second, and seventy-five miles a minute, and 4,500 per hour.
With an atmosphere of relative density of the Earth’s, it is easy to see what a pyrotechnical and electrical display this would reveal to the lens of a telescope, giving the impression of fire on an inconceivable magnitude. It seems unreasonable that in the realm of Nature anything, or that anywhere fuel can be found for an eternal fire except in an old orthodox Hell.
To an observer on Mars or Venus, the earth would, no doubt, present the same starlike appearance that those planets do to our earthly eyes.
The electrical sparks on a trolley wire or dynamo give the same expression to our eyes, though in miniature, with no consciousness of heat to our feelings.
It is doubtful if, with all the observations of the Sun by telescopes, we have gained any knowledge of its structure, but only of its revolutions, size and movements, the same as the Earth. It would be a very difficult subject to diagnose clearly as to its productions of animal and vegetable life. The electrical influences through an atmosphere proportionally deep with ours, with its clouds that must exist in the same, could very thoroughly obscure the surface of the Sun. Unless at special intervals, when certain exposures would be called Sun-spots, either on a great space of continent or ocean.
The great flames of gases in the atmosphere would give the impression, by telescopic view, of a burning mass, when under these atmospheric flames all is cool and calm.
In the writer’s mind there is no doubt but the Sun is as favorable in condition for animal and vegetable life as the Earth, and has both in proportional greater variety and species. Nature having no limit to designs, uses no duplicates, never repeats herself in anything. No two grains of seed, no two snow flakes, are ever just alike. A million bushels of peas will have no two alike, yet every one has its individuality as a pea. Man cannot discriminate one blackbird from another in a flock, but to the birds they are as individual as mankind to each other. For these reasons it is easy to see that every planet may be peopled with different varieties of animal and vegetable life as it is to find the variations in different countries of the Earth. While the climate of the Sun may be hotter than that of the Earth, Nature can adapt itself to any condition of heat or cold.
Thus far the argument has been chiefly in considering the influence of heat by friction on planetary surfaces. Later this influence will be briefly taken up to demonstrate its interior effect in producing earthquakes and volcanoes.