The Source and Mode of Solar Energy Throughout the Universe

by Isaac W. Heysinger

The difference between radiated thermal light and heat is obviously one of degree only and not of kind. The undulations of light may be compared to the thrust of a rapier, and the more massive waves of radiant heat to the blow of a bludgeon, but the same resistance which arrests the advance of the one must retard and finally arrest that of the other, if sufficiently extended. Within the limits of a space in which Professor Stewart conceives that the first rays of light which ever flashed forth at the dawn of creation, in the primal æons of the universe, are still to this day, along their original lines of radiation, “traversing space at the rate of one hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles per second,” there must certainly be room enough and absorption enough (which even a few yards of mist will supply) to curb these runaway steeds somewhere along their lines of flaming passage. At that very point they are at work acting upon the molecules of the attenuated vapors of space, and assisting to re-establish the potential energy which has there been converted, into another form of force by the planetary rotations of the solar systems of those distant regions. By the law of the diffusion of gases, and that of the diffusion or transference of heat-energy from molecule to molecule, the vast realms of interstellar space must tend to be all brought into approximate uniformity of tensions, and the force abstracted at those points of space occupied by the relatively few and insignificant solar systems will be returned, not directly at the identical places where such solar systems may exist, but at every part of space to which their radiant energy extends. As we give from our own supplies to other systems for their support, so they, in turn, give back again to us. It is said that in the earliest days of creation the stars sang together; they still sing together, planets and suns, as

“Jura answers from her misty shroud

Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.”

When old Earth lifts his brimming beaker from the great crystal sea and drains it to the good health of all the stars of heaven, they each respond with fiery energy, and by their merry twinkle we may know how highly they appreciate the toast. We are all one family,—but what a family! Comets, planets, double stars, variable stars, stars of complementary colors, blue, yellow, orange, and red stars, stars which blaze up in sudden conflagration, apparently new stars, nebulæ half star and half vapor, nebulæ all vapor and others all stars, the vast milky-way like a wondrous river of hundreds of millions of solar systems, the insulated stars scattered through space like watchmen on the distant hills beyond the city walls, streams of stars, stars which are parting from each other in space like scattering families, and those which travel together in groups like pioneers in a strange country,—all these and doubtless other unknown types and forms compose this sidereal family. Will they fall into their categories as lawful subjects, so as to be properly classified in a single scheme of the visible order of creation, or shall we fail to interpret their apparent mysteries when we apply the same principles which have been successfully applied to the phenomena of our own solar system? Let us see.

In examining the sun, we find that a beam of its light passed through a prism is thrown upon the wall in a wedge-shaped streak of rainbow-tinted colors. Fraunhofer, many years ago, found that this spectrum was crossed at irregular intervals by a series of dark lines, of variable width and distance apart, of which he catalogued more than five hundred. These lines were subsequently found to correspond in the aggregate, in their position in the spectrum, with a series of bright lines of different colors which formed the separate spectra of various metals when burned, in vapor or powder, in the flame of an alcohol lamp. Each of these transverse lines was found to have a fixed and invariable position in the extended scale of the spectrum, and scarcely any lines of the different elements are alike; so that, when the spectrum is properly magnified under telescopic observation and the lines identified, we have the means of determining the presence or absence of such elements in the vaporous constitution of any incandescent body by examination of its spectrum. In this way many of our terrestrial elements are found to exist in the sun,—so many, in fact, that we know that the sun’s nucleus, or core, must be composed substantially of the same elements, the same sort of matter, as exists on earth,—that we are, in fact, “a chip of the old block.” But it was found—and this is the real basis of spectrum analysis—that if a certain metal or other element be burned in the flame of an alcohol lamp, and a more brilliant flame of the same metal or element burned in another lamp be observed through the first flame, it will be seen that, “while the general illumination of the spectrum is increased, the previous bright lines characterizing the element are now replaced by dark lines or lines relatively very faint; in a word, the spectrum characteristic of the given element is exactly reversed” (Appleton’s Cyclopædia, article “Spectrum Analysis”). We have referred to this fact above in considering the origin of sun-spots, showing that they are due to increased heat acting upon the core of the sun so as to volatilize an abnormally large proportion of the elements usually in a more condensed state upon the surface of the solar body beneath its hydrogen envelope. These vapors, thus raised in temperature, are driven upward by their volatilization into the incandescent atmosphere of hydrogen, and the vaporous matters in the higher strata thus produce the characteristic absorption bands of these elements, while the overheated vapors, by a vast uprush from beneath, hurl aside the more highly heated hydrogen above to appear as faculæ around the sun-spot, the cooler upper layers of hydrogen following downward the subsiding vaporous metallic uprush as it sinks back beneath the photospheric level.

1 Solar. Dark Heat Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Actinic

2 Sodium,

3 Calcium.