The Source and Mode of Solar Energy Throughout the Universe

by Isaac W. Heysinger

On the contrary, the mass of Jupiter is so great, and his attraction of gravity so powerful, that it is only by his exceedingly rapid diurnal rotation (once in less than ten hours) that it is possible for him to accumulate any effective percentage of oxygen at all. But there is certainly plenty of water there.

We may approximately compute, in general terms, the proportion of oxygen in the atmospheres of the other planets in the same way. Neptune, it is true, is so far distant from the sun that the solar orb only “appears about the same magnitude as Venus when at its greatest brilliancy, as viewed from the earth,” but we must not forget that “the intensity of the sun’s light would be more than ten thousand times greater than that of Venus” (Professor Dunkin, in “The Midnight Sky”). Unless the moon gathers a portion of the earth’s oxygen (the planetary satellites, like Saturn’s rings, thus constituting in their rotations a constituent part of the planets themselves), the percentage of this gas in her atmosphere must be exceedingly small, for her axial rotation has a period of a whole lunar month, being the same as that of her revolution around the earth as a center.

The absence of apparent atmosphere and moisture from the visible lunar surface has already been mentioned and explained. The means by which this fact has been approximately determined are described by Professor Dunkin, in “The Midnight Sky,” as follows: “Among the many proofs of the non-existence of a lunar atmosphere, it may be mentioned that no water can be seen; at least there is not a sufficient quantity in any one spot so as to be visible from the earth. Again, there are no clouds; for if there were, we should immediately discover them by the variable light and shade which they would produce. But one great proof of the absence of any large amount of vapor being suspended over the lunar surface is the sudden extinction of a star when occulted by the moon. The author has been a constant observer of these phenomena, and, though his experience is of long standing, he has never observed an occultation of a star or planet, especially at the unilluminated edge of a young moon, without having his conviction confirmed that there is no appreciable lunar atmosphere …. Professor Challis has subjected the results of a large number of these observations to a severe mathematical test, but he has not been able to discover the slightest trace of any effect produced by a lunar atmosphere.”

In Appleton’s Cyclopædia, article “The Moon,” it is stated that “Schröter (about 1800) claimed to have discovered indications of vegetation on the surface of the moon. These consist of certain traces of a greenish tint which appear and reappear periodically; much as the white spots covering the polar regions of Mars …. As we are able, under the most favorable conditions, to use upon the moon telescopic powers which have the effect of bringing the satellite to within one hundred and fifty to one hundred and twenty miles of us, we should doubtless notice any such marked changes on her surface as the passage of the seasons produces, for example, on our own globe.” Very recently (August 12, 1894), it has been stated, Professor Gathmann has observed a peculiar green spot about forty by seventy miles in area near the crater of Tycho Brahe, “on the northwestern edge of the satellite’s upper limb,” which had disappeared twenty-two hours afterwards.

We understand, of course, that the moon’s librations, by the variation of position of the lunar body, enable us to see, at times, around the edge of this satellite somewhat, so that, instead of observing only one-half, we can in this way see nearly six-tenths of her surface, but not at the same time, of course. When the moon is dark it occupies a position between the earth and the sun, and only its opposite face is illuminated. In this position the attraction of solar gravity and the attraction of the electrically opposite solar electrosphere both accumulate their forces upon the moon’s atmosphere in the same line as the repulsion of the earth’s similar electricity, so that the lunar moisture and atmosphere are, at this part of her subordinate orbit, most powerfully forced away from the direction of the earth. As the moon now proceeds towards her first quarter, the terrestrial repulsion drives her atmosphere radially outward, while solar gravity and electrical attraction tend to hold it in the direction of the sun. The result will be an electrospheric libration, so to speak, and the moon’s atmosphere and moisture will be carried around towards its illuminated face and, to some extent, will overlap the area of terrestrial repulsion. But as the moon advances this will gradually diminish, soon cease, and finally be reversed as it again approaches darkness. We can now understand why the green surface, if it really was due to vegetation, appeared along the lunar margin at the time described above, and also that the observation of planetary occultations “at the unilluminated edge of the young moon” was the very worst part of the moon and its orbit in which to look for air or moisture; as the sun’s influence is then directly away from the unilluminated surface of the moon, and his “pull” would have, in fact, still further denuded the very portion most persistently examined, and where this absence of atmosphere was especially noted.

When considering the transference of energy from the peripheral regions of the solar system to the center, its conversion there into a new form of molecular force, and its subsequent distribution, we find a curious and instructive parallel in the action of the reflex nervous system of animal life. This system is one in which the brain or other conscious center of nerve-energy takes no part. Tickle the foot of a child, for example, and its whole muscular system is thrown into uncontrollable convulsions of laughter. Here an exciting contact with the terminal filaments of the afferent or sensory nerves is rapidly carried into the local nerve-center of this part of the system,—that is, the sensory column of the spinal cord. This center of ganglionic nerve-matter lies directly against the corresponding motor mass, both freely communicating with each other. The sensory current passing into its central ganglion undergoes some peculiar change of character, probably one of intensification, such as is observed in the action of the condenser of an electrical machine, through which sensory ganglion, thus raised in potential, it passes to the motor ganglion adjacent, where it is instantly transformed into an entirely different form of energy. The sensory character has now entirely disappeared, and it has been converted into and is flashed forth as motor energy to the different muscles of the body, which are immediately contracted, the violent molecular motion of the fibres being at once converted into muscular motion in mass. The changes are entirely analogous to those we see in the different conversions of energy in our solar system. Considering the surface of the body as a planetary electrosphere, it is acted upon by excitation from without; currents of energy are engendered, which are at once transmitted to the sensory ganglion, corresponding to the hydrogen atmosphere or electrosphere of the sun; intensification of action here ensues, the current passing through this ganglion or atmosphere into the solar body itself, which corresponds to the motor ganglion; both ganglia are now highly excited; the electrical force is converted into the radiant molecular motor energy of heat and light in the sun and muscular excitement in the body, and these are flashed forth and find scope for their action within the body of the subject or upon the surface of the planets, which lie, like the muscular structure of the body, within the genetic electrosphere where, acted upon from without and by agencies entirely external, moving contact has induced the primary molecular action, which was then instantaneously transferred to the center, there converted into another form, that of motor energy, and thence sent forth to produce action in the muscles of the body in the one case, and in the other upon the planetary bodies and their satellites and other structures which occupy surrounding space.

CHAPTER V.

THE DISTRIBUTION AND CONSERVATION OF SOLAR ENERGY.

What, then, becomes of the light and heat flashed forth with eternal energy from the fiery waves of the sun’s incandescent atmosphere? Professor Ball (“In the High Heavens”) says, “Much of what has been said with regard to light may be repeated with regard to heat. We know that radiant heat consists of ethereal undulations of the same character as the waves of light. Hence we see that the heat or the light radiated from a glowing gas is mainly provided at the expense of the energy possessed by the molecules in virtue of their internal oscillations.” Conversely, of course, the ethereal undulations thus induced by high molecular motion in the heated gas or vapor must disappear in so-called absorption or transference by contact with other molecules, themselves devoid of such specific internal oscillations. The heat motion then disappears as heat by its conversion into work, just as the motion of a belt in a mill disappears in the work of the machine which it drives. One two-hundred-and-thirty-two-millionth part of the radiant solar energy, we know, is caught by the flying planets of our system in the forms of heat and light, adapted to sustain life and its continued potentiality, and we know that this solar energy is the sole source of all the development and maintenance of the planets as the possible abodes of organic life, past, present or future.