The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

Thus these wise astronomers claim from this slim, unreliable evidence and the assumed excessive heat of the sun, that the sun is not a solid body at its surface. Yet the same author rejects this same evidence—that Jupiter is not a solid body—in the following language: "The difference in the time of Jupiter's rotation at the equator and in middle latitudes is, so far as we yet know, about five minutes. That is to say, the equatorial regions rotate in nine hours and fifty minutes and those in middle latitudes in nine hours and fifty-five minutes, a difference amounting to 200 miles an hour, a seemingly impossible difference were the surface liquid. We cannot assume this to be the case without more observations than are yet recorded, as no well defined law of rotation in different latitudes has yet been made out." Thus this learned astronomer will not assume for Jupiter what he assumed for the sun, and weakens and destroys in Jupiter the very same arguments he used to prove the sun was not a solid body at its surface.

This same learned astronomer—and I mention him because he is high authority and has written the most recent work on astronomy—says that, "under the enormous pressure of the earth, continually increasing to the center, the matter composing the inner portion of the earth is compressed to the density of a metal. If the earth were composed of a fluid or even of a substance which would bend no more than the hardest steel, such a motion as that of the earth upon its axis would be impossible."

I accept this as a very reasonable conclusion, and hold the same rule applies to the sun, and that the sun's "enormous pressure, increasing to its center," would compress its inner portion to the density of a metal; and that the sun could not revolve upon its axis and retain its rigidity as it does unless its inner or central portion was as rigid as steel. And this necessarily means that its surface is about as solid as that of our earth.

Therefore the sun cannot be molten or liquid at its surface, as the scientific guessers have prognosticated. As they have guessed wrong about nine-tenths of the time, this is one of the nine hundred bad guesses.

Lord Kelvin, our wisest scientist, a few years ago estimated that our earth, only fifty miles below its surface, was a molten mass of fiery metal. Now, Simon Newcomb says it has the density of metal, and is as hard as steel, and I think Lord Kelvin has changed his opinion and will agree with him.

Thus the hoary-headed superstition that the center of our earth was a molten mass is passing away, and it will be the same as to the heat, and molten condition of the sun—it will be relegated to the plutonian shades of ignorance and superstition.

Because there were numerous volcanoes, geysers and hot springs scattered over the crust of the earth and in some deep mines there were hot sections, the scientists jumped at the conclusion that the inner portions of the earth were a molten, fiery mass. This was to accord with their false theory of a red-hot molten sun, and their assertion that the earth had its inception as a fire mist, and rolling ball of white-heated gases. But the scientists have changed their theories rapidly in recent years. They are just beginning to discover that there are zones of heat and cold beneath the earth's surface just as there are above its surface. That there are electric currents of heat in volcanic regions and mineral and mining sections, and none in others, and even in the same mines there are warm and cold sections.

Take the Cornstalk mines in Nevada. A section 2,300 feet below the surface is very warm, while another section 1,200 deeper—being 3,500 feet below the surface—is very cool. Surely Lord Kelvin would now laugh at himself to think he made such a calculation of the heat of the earth and said it was a molten mass of fire fifty miles below its surface. And he even said it was so hot seven miles down in the earth that water could only remain or exist in a state of vapor.

Ye gods! When so great a prophet makes such mistakes, surely the little prophets that walk in his footsteps ought to "go 'way back and sit down," and cease talking about the heat of the sun.