The Source and Mode of Solar Energy Throughout the Universe

by Isaac W. Heysinger

Upper figure shows sun’s axis inclined laterally; lower figure, from front to rear, and at right angles to former.

C, chromosphere; E E, solar equator; A B, A′ B′, lines of planetary electric currents; F, latitude covered by vertical position of planets, 14° in width; P P, sun’s axis.

If the sun’s equator were coincident with the plane of the planetary orbits, it is obvious that all the planetary energies would be directed, whatever the position of the planets around the sun, immediately upon this equatorial great circle, and that, at each revolution upon his axis, corresponding nearly to our calendar month, the same part of his sphere would be exposed to these direct currents, so that the intensity would be, in its aggregate, nearly a constant quantity. But, by reason of the sun’s axial inclination of seven degrees to the plane of the planetary orbits, a far more complex and important condition of affairs ensues. It will be seen at once that the plane of the planetary orbits intersects the sun’s equator at opposite sides, and that, from a minimum of nothing, this line reaches a maximum, twice in each circumference, of seven degrees, one north and the other south of the equator, and that this arc of fourteen degrees, thus traversed by every planet in its orbital rotation around the sun, measures more than one hundred thousand miles from north to south upon the solar surface, nearly one-half the distance which separates the earth from the moon. If all the planets were in conjunction or nearly so, on one side of the sun, for example, and in the vertical plane of the sun’s axis, they would continue to deliver their electrical currents with their greatest intensity upon a single point of his surface fifty-two thousand miles north of his equator, while the opposite point, one hundred and four thousand miles distant, would be unaffected by any direct currents at all. Conversely, if in conjunction on the opposite side of the sun, they would continue to deliver these currents upon a corresponding point fifty-two thousand miles south of the equator; but if in conjunction in the vertical plane transverse to the sun’s axial inclination, these currents on either side of the sun would be delivered directly upon the solar equator. The importance of this will be understood when it is considered that for many of our years such planets as Jupiter and Saturn must continue to direct their currents upon a very slowly changing point of the sun’s surface, by reason of their vast annual rotational period, while with the earth and the interior planets these various points are struck with ever-increasing rapidity as the year decreases in length with the different planets, the earth, Venus, and Mercury. There is a solar equinoctial, so to speak, just as there is a terrestrial equinoctial in which the sun crosses the line twice each year, and the meteorological disturbances faintly shown on the earth at such times are vastly increased on the sun, and rendered far more complex by the interaction of many planets upon the sun, instead of a single sun upon each planet. While our equinoctial has to do with gravity and light and heat, and probably magnetism, the solar equinoctial deals with the vast electrical streams which feed its fires and set it boiling with furious energy, first at one point, then at another, until the increment has been absorbed and adjusted, and thus equalized throughout his mass. What a new interest this must arouse in our study of sun-spots, faculæ, prominences, sun-storms, and the vast panorama of solar action hung up before our astonished eyes! A new world here awaits its Columbus.

But not only the planets thus gather, so to speak, electricity for the sun’s support from space; the moon also must do its part, as it rotates in the same manner, subject to the sun, and has its own motion through space. But an examination of the moon shows no atmosphere and no aqueous matter visible to us, and also the singular fact that it constantly presents one side only to the earth. R. Kalley Miller, in his “Romance of Astronomy,” article “The Moon,” says, “After an elaborate analysis, Professor Hausen, of Gotha, found that it could be accounted for only by supposing that the side of the moon nearest us was lighter than the other, and hence that its center of gravity was not at its center of figure, but considerably nearer the side of it which is always turned away from us. He calculates the distance between these centers to be nearly thirty-five miles, evidently a most important eccentricity, when we remember that the radius of the moon is little over a thousand miles. It must have been produced by some great internal convulsion after the moon assumed its solid state; but the forces required to produce this disruption are less than might at first sight appear necessary, owing to the fact that the force of gravitation and the weight of matter are six times less at the moon than with us.” Those who are fond of the so-called “Argument of Design” will be gratified to learn that, if the moon had a rotation upon its own axis similar to that of the earth, all life—past, present or future—would have been impossible on that satellite or planet; and that, on the contrary,—provided she always turns the same side of her surface to the earth,—it is quite possible that air, water, and life may exist, or may have existed, on the opposite side of the moon, but not otherwise. In fact, air and water must now exist on the opposite side; and, since her whole supply will thus be condensed upon half her surface or less, even with her small force of gravity, it may be quite sufficient in quantity and density for the support of animal, vegetable, or even human life. By reason of this difference in the lunar center of gravity, the side presented to the earth in physical position is similar to the summit of a mountain upon the earth’s surface two hundred miles high, and surely we would not expect to find much air or water or life at that altitude. But the opposite side would resemble a champagne country at the foot of this enormous mountain, and might be well fitted for human existence. Now, we know that similar electricities repel each other, and air or gases charged with similar electricities are equally self-repellent. Professor Tyndall, in his “Lessons in Electricity,” says, “The electricity escaping from a point or flame into the air renders the air self-repulsive. The consequence is, that when the hand is placed over a point mounted on the prime conductor of a good machine, a cold blast is distinctly felt …. The blast is called the ‘electric wind.’ Wilson moved bodies by its action; Faraday caused it to depress the surface of a liquid; Hamilton employed the reaction of the electric wind to make pointed wires rotate. The wind was also found to promote evaporation.”

Fig. 1, mutual repulsion of similarly electrified pith-balls; 2, the electrical windmill, atmospheric repulsion; 3, repulsion of a flame by electricity; 4, electrical distribution around an oval conductor; 5, mutual attraction of opposite electricities; 5a, mutual repulsion of similar electricities; 6, mutual repulsion of electrospheres of earth and moon; 7, mutual repulsion of electrospheres of sun and comet.

While electrical repulsion is doubtless analogous to, and correlative with, the attraction of gravitation, this force, and even gravity itself, has been sometimes interpreted as derived from the mutually interacting molecules of space itself. We may even learn somewhat of how such repulsions of similar and attractions of opposite electrospheres might occur. We constantly speak of positive and negative electricity as though these were different fluids, but such expressions are employed only in the same manner as the analogous terms, heat and cold. We know, of course, that cold is the relative absence of heat, the dividing line being not a fixed, but a constantly changing one, so that one body is cold to another by reason of relative, and not absolute, deprivation of heat. It is well known, however, that cold, which is purely a negative state, manifests the same apparent radiant energy as heat. A vessel near an iceberg is exposed to a wave of cold, precisely as of heat from a heated body at the same distance. This, of course, is due to abstraction and not to increment. All space being occupied by attenuated matter in a state of unstable electrical equilibrium, as we say, which simply means a condition ready to be raised or lowered in tension by absorption from or into outside media, all concrete bodies floating in that space must have an electrical potential either equal to, or higher, or else lower than that of their surrounding space. A solitary body in space, if we can conceive of such, in either a higher or lower state of electrical tension, would be drawn upon from all sides to equalize the distribution and restore the general average. But if two bodies occupy the same field, and are widely different from each other in electrical potential, one higher and the other lower than that of space, this distribution will be towards each other, and must be manifested by mutual attraction. But if, on the contrary, these two bodies are both equally higher or lower than the spatial average, they have nothing to give to each other, but have this difference to give to or receive only from outer space, and hence they will be drawn apart or, as we say, mutually repelled. The case is similar to what we see in the case of bodies of water at various levels. Suppose there be a lake of a fixed level, and communicating with it and with each other, by open channels, two ponds of water occupying an island in the middle of the lake. If one of these ponds be higher in level and the other lower than the lake, their waters will rapidly converge, the higher flowing into the lower; but if both are at the same level, and higher than the lake, they will flow apart into the lake. Or, if both are at the same level, and lower than the lake, the water of the latter will equally flow from outside into both ponds, and their waters will still be held separate from each other. The analogies of these various levels may be pursued to any desired extent, as electrical tensions find their most exact analogies in the pressures of bodies of water at different levels and of different quantities, and these analogies are those most constantly used in the interpretation of such electrical phenomena.

The great electrical activity of the electrospheres of the earth and moon, while they discharge their tremendous currents directly into the sun, at the same time must cause their similarly electrified atmospheres to mutually repel each other, while gravity continues to operate to maintain the earth and moon at their fixed distances from each other, and to retain their gaseous envelopes around their own bodies. The result must be that these similarly electrified atmospheres repel each other with a force proportioned to their masses of atmosphere and the intensity of the electricities of each. The moon’s axial rotation being completed but once in twenty-eight days, and that of the earth once in each day, and the moon’s mass and volume being so much less than those of the earth, whatever of electrified air or moisture she may have (and she must have both, proportionate to her attributes) would have been driven as by a cyclone to the opposite side of the moon and there retained. Now, with an atmosphere and water only on one side of the moon, and that the side opposite the earth, it is obvious that a rotation on her axis at all resembling that of the earth would carry every part of her surface, at each complete rotation, from a region of air and moisture into one deprived of both, and in such a condition she would of necessity be deprived of both life and its possibility; hence, as the laws of nature compel the lunar atmosphere and moisture to reside permanently on the side always opposite the earth, a co-ordinate arrest of the moon’s axial motion with reference to the earth could alone compensate for such a state of things, and, curiously enough, we find as a solitary exception, compared with the planets, that such is the case. The moon unquestionably has both atmosphere and water on its opposite side. In his recent work, “In the High Heavens,” Professor Ball reviews the physical conditions of the other planets as possible abodes of life. He pronounces against the moon because night and day would each be a fortnight in length; but this is surely no objection, for even in Norway and Greenland such nights and days are not uncommon at different seasons, and thousands of human beings, even as at present constituted on earth, spend their lives there in content and happiness. That the moon also would be terribly scorched by the long day and frozen by the long night does not necessarily follow, for the atmosphere of Mars, that author says, “to a large extent mitigates the fierceness with which the sun’s rays would beat down on the globe if it were devoid of such protection.” As the moon’s opposite face must have a double quota both of atmosphere and clouds, the difficulty will be correspondingly less than on Mars; and as for the “lightness” of bodies on the moon, they would probably get along quite as well as mosquitoes and like “birds of prey” in the marshes along our coasts. The author refers constantly to our bodies; for example, “Could we live on a planet like Neptune?” No, we could not; we would be dead before we got there. Nor could we live in the bark of a tree, or at the bottom of the ocean, or in a globule of serum; but living beings are found there nevertheless. The principle is that wherever life is possible there we may expect to find life; and surely life is, or has been, or will be possible, not only on the moon, so far as our knowledge of physical conditions can go, but also on some of the other planets. Of course each planet has its life stage, but this applies not only to the earth, but to all the other planets as well, and not only to the planets of our own system, but to those of all other solar systems. Each has had, or will have, its stage in which life is possible, and these planets may be like human habitations, in which whole races at times migrate from one home to another. There is no conceivable reason why this may not be the general law of creation, and every analogy leads us to believe that it is so.

It has been recently announced that, from telescopic observations, the atmosphere of Mars must be at least as attenuated as that among the highest mountainous regions of the earth, if this planet has any atmosphere at all. That it must be far less dense than that of the earth at sea-level is obvious, for the mass and volume of Mars are very much less than those of our own planet; but that Mars is devoid of a gaseous envelope or atmosphere is contrary to what we know of all sidereal physics. The sun, the fixed stars, the comets, the nebulæ, and even the meteorolithic fragments which fall upon the earth, all show the same elementary chemical constitution as the earth itself, and we cannot believe that Mars alone is differently constituted from every other body we have been able to examine. We have direct evidence, on this planet, of polar snows and their melting away under the sun’s heat; we see the apparent areas of sea and land; it has its moons as the earth has hers, and exhibits all the characteristic phenomena of the earth and other planets. All sidereal bodies that we know of, except, perhaps, our moon, which exception we have fully accounted for, are found to be surrounded by gaseous envelopes or atmospheres of some sort. The sun, the fixed stars, the nuclei of comets, the condensing nebulæ, the planets Jupiter and the earth, which are those under our most direct observation, and even the meteorites, when examined, reveal the presence of many times their own volumes of independent atmospheric gases; and whatever may be the theory of the origin or development of Mars, it must have been subjected to the same influences, the same environment, and the same processes of creation as those of our solar system generally; and that this body alone should possess no gaseous envelope—for the denial of atmosphere denies, at the same time, the presence of any or all surrounding gases—is quite incredible. Only the most positive, direct, and long-continued proofs of such fact could be accepted, and even then the history of all scientific progress shows that what are believed to be facts themselves fluctuate like fancies till, by their accumulated force, they solidify into universally accepted demonstration. The fact, moreover, that the atmospheres of the smaller planets are more attenuated than our own and those of the larger ones denser has no bearing, in itself, on the probability of the existence of life on these other planets, for in our own atmosphere oxygen, which is the efficient element, is diluted with four times its quantity of inert nitrogen. These proportions doubtless vary largely in other atmospheres, so that the oxygen may be much richer in some and far poorer, relatively, in others. The mere fact that the presence of nitrogen, probably, and aqueous vapor, certainly, depends on the gravity of the mass of each planet, while the oxygen is due to electrolytic decomposition induced by the combined volume, mass, and rotation, and other causes,—such as the axial inclination of such planets, for example,—renders these variations in the constitution of planetary atmospheres a certainty. As Mars has a diameter much more than one-half that of the earth, and a diurnal rotational period nearly the same, while his mass, which controls the action of gravity, is only about one-ninth that of the earth (see Appleton’s Cyclopædia), it is obvious that his oxygen-gathering power, compared with that for accumulating nitrogen and aqueous vapor, is much higher than that of the earth, and we should expect to find there an attenuated atmosphere very rich in oxygen, and with a relatively smaller proportion of aqueous vapor, or even water, on his surface. Such seem to be the facts as far as observed.

In operating an electric machine the strength of the current is directly proportionate to the speed of rotation,—that is to say, to the velocity of the generating surface; for example, of the Wimshurst induction machine it is stated (page 63, “Electricity in the Service of Man”), “These four-and-one-half inch discharges take place in regular succession at every two and a half turns of the handle.” It is also a well-established law of electrolysis that “The amount of decomposition effected by the current is in proportion to the current strength.” Professor Ferguson (“Electricity,” page 225) says of the voltameter, an instrument devised by Faraday, and used for testing the strength of currents by the proportionate decomposition of acidulated water, “Mixed gases rise into the tube, and the quantity of gas given off in a given time measures the strength of the current.” Roughly estimating the diameter of Mars at five-eighths, the surface velocity at three-fifths, and the mass at one-ninth those of the earth, this planet should have an atmosphere containing about sixty per cent. of oxygen and forty of nitrogen, with a barometric pressure at sea-level of about six and one-half inches of mercury. This would be an excellent atmosphere,—about equal in its quota of oxygen for each respiration to that of the higher areas of Persia, a great country for roses. The aqueous vapors lying low and near the surface would serve as a vaporous screen to concentrate and retain the sun’s heat and retard radiation from that planet. Nothing in particular seems to be the matter with Mars.