The Source and Mode of Solar Energy Throughout the Universe

by Isaac W. Heysinger

There are other causes also, readily conceivable, for such increased electrical action; for instance, in that thickly-peopled region of space, two solar systems adjacent might easily have their exterior planets so related to each other as suddenly, at their points of nearest approach, to cause one or more to direct an abnormally large electrical current into the sun of the adjacent system; this would correspond in electric energy, in fact, to a violent “perturbation” in its orbit by the action of gravity produced by a neighboring planet or system. No reversal of polarity could take place between these planets under these circumstances, any more than between the earth and the moon. In some portions of the Milky Way, doubtless, suns blaze by dozens across the sky at night, and by day as well, to which, in our more solitary skies, we are strangers. Revolving in perfect harmony, perturbations must nevertheless be frequent, and to what limits they may there be confined we shall never know until we realize the extent of these galaxies and the relative contiguity of their solar systems to each other. It is enough to show how such variations may occur; in what particular way they do occur does not affect the question of their origin. Even if such increased energy were to continue by permanently increased planetary action, it is not necessary to suppose that a corresponding permanent increase of light and heat would result on the part of the sun, for its density is such (only one-fourth that of the earth) that, under the tremendous force of its gravity (twenty-seven and one-tenth times that of the earth), its constituents cannot be maintained in solid form, but must be, as before stated, either liquid or gaseous, and perhaps in part both. Now, as it has been computed that the sun, by contraction to its present density, would have evolved its present light and heat for a period of millions of years, it is obvious that any increase in its present volume, without increase of mass, would produce precisely opposite and compensated results, so that the sun could receive from outside sources as much heat as would expand its present volume to that at the initial point of such assumed condensation without increased emission of light and heat. The sun is thus, in effect, a self-compensating machine, and its passage through a region of increased electrical generation would first manifest itself in a vast increase of brilliancy, due to higher incandescence of its hydrogen envelope; this, in turn, would be communicated to the deeper structures of the sun, producing increased volatilization and dark absorption bands, and finally to the whole solar mass, expanding its volume in proportion to the heat absorbed. Hence we should see precisely the phenomena that we do see in flaming stars or so-called new stars. We find such compensations all through nature, and it is simply in accordance with her universal laws that they occur. It is a singular circumstance that the catastrophe which is foretold in the biblical record as the termination of all human life on earth, for the present cycle, at least, should be almost literally in accordance with the phenomena characteristic of such an increase of solar energy, and one produced in some such manner. If the temperature of the solar atmosphere were rapidly raised by increased planetary action to a point which would reverse the lines of hydrogen from dark to bright, say to a brightness eight hundred times that of the normal, as in the case of the temporary star cited, though the heat would not, of course, be increased in any such proportion, yet the heavens would be indeed rolled up as a scroll, and all life would be extinguished in a very brief period. But the planets would continue to roll along their orbits, the integrity of the earth’s mass would still be intact, and after a few days or weeks the sun would begin to decline in brightness, the volatilized vapors would slowly recede within the solar atmosphere, and the temperature would gradually fall again to its normal, leaving, however, a lifeless world to roll on its way henceforth, but as bright and cheerful in all its possibilities, when the former conditions had gradually become restored, as before. Perhaps some distant astronomer in the neighborhood of Sirius—if we shall have travelled so far away by that time—might send a note to the morning papers to announce that the temporary star near Alpha Centauri had again receded to the tenth magnitude. In due time—perhaps a thousand years—all would be ready for a new development of life, and the cycle would continue as before. Perchance, too, in some deep abyss, or buried far beneath the surface, some germs of life might still continue to exist; and from these, like the seeds resurrected from buried mummies, a new life might again begin, guided along once more through vast ages in a progressive ascent from development to development until, in some new and strange forms, the higher types of life might again appear. To these there would indeed be revealed a new heaven and a new earth. Who knows how many such cycles of life may have come and gone on earth, in which, like the dwellers of Jerusalem, new peoples have built new cities, one above another, upon the unknown graves of the past? In the words of Tennyson,—

“A wondrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of earth,

For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,

And he felt himself in his force to be Nature’s crowning race.

As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,

So many a million of ages have gone to the making man:

He now is first, but is he the last?”

Whatever the coming, the progress, or the going of life on earth, the course of our solar system will go on the same, the processes of creation unchanged and her mechanism unimpaired. It is obvious that no such conditions could prevail in the return to unorganizable chaos which must be the consequence of any possible planetary collisions in space. No conceivable process of creation could return a system disrupted into meteorites to an operative solar system again. Even the nebular hypothesis contemplates nothing of that sort as, by the wildest conjecture, ever possible. But with us the danger is far distant. Professor Proctor says, in his article “Suns in Flames,” “As Sir William Herschel long since pointed out, we can recognize in various parts of the heavens various stages of development, and chief among the regions where as yet nature’s work seems incomplete is the Galactic zone,—especially that half of it where the Milky Way consists of irregular streams and clouds of stellar light. As there is no reason for believing that our sun belongs to this part of the galaxy, but, on the contrary, good ground for considering that he belongs to the class of insulated stars, few of which have shown signs of irregular variation, while none have ever blazed suddenly out with many hundred times their former lustre, we may fairly infer a very high degree of probability in favor of the belief that, for many ages still to come, the sun will continue steadily to discharge his duties as fire, light, and life of the solar system.” The passage of our system through gradually changing regions of space, as contrasted with streams or vortices, could not affect our sun’s light even temporarily, as the contraction and expansion of its volume would fully compensate for any such gradual or partial variation, and, by position, he is far from likely to pass into any of those whirlpools or torrents of space which seem to mark at irregular intervals the region of the irregularly variable stars.

Allied in appearance to such stars which suddenly flame out in space, but totally different in reality, are comets. These strangers to our own system have excited the wonder and astonishment of mankind from the earliest ages. They seem to defy all rules and all explanation; but, when properly examined, they will fall inevitably into the general scheme of the source and mode of solar energy which we have endeavored to present. These bodies enter our solar system from without. Appleton’s Cyclopædia says, “Schiaparelli, to whom the discovery is in part due, considers the meteors to be dispersed portions of the comet’s original substance,—that is, of the substance with which the comet entered the solar domain.” Professor Proctor, “Meteoric Astronomy,” says, “A word or two may be permitted on the question of the condition of comets freshly arriving on the scene of the solar system. It is assumed sometimes that the train of meteors already exists when the comet first comes within the solar domain.” In the “Romance of Astronomy” (R. Kalley Miller, M.A.) it is said, “In a sort of debatable territory between our own solar system and the infinite stellar universe around we come upon these erratic and anomalous bodies—the comets; some of which have accidentally become permanent attendants upon our sun; others have only paid it a single casual visit in the course of their wanderings through space, and are not likely again to come within the range of its attracting influence; while countless millions are doubtless scattered throughout the realms of the infinite, whose existence will never be revealed to human ken at all.” Professor Helmholtz, in fact (see addendum to his lecture on the origin of the planetary system), advanced the idea in a speculative way, that our terrestrial life might have had its origin in one of these meteoric bodies by the “transmission of organisms through space.” In Professor Proctor’s article on comets (“Mysteries of Time and Space”) he says, “The paths followed by comets show no resemblance either to the planetary orbits or to each other. Here we see a comet travelling in a path of moderate extent and not very eccentric; then another which rushes from a distance of two or three thousand millions of miles, approaches the sun with ever-increasing velocity until nearer to him than parts of his own corona (as seen in eclipses), sweeps around him with inconceivable rapidity, and makes off again to where the aphelion of its orbit lies far out in space beyond the most distant known planet,—Neptune. Some comets travel in a direct, some in a retrograde path; a few near the plane of the earth’s orbit, many in planes showing every variety of inclination. Some comets regularly return after intervals of a few years; some after hundreds of years; others are only seen once or twice, and then unaccountably vanish; and not a few show by the paths they follow that they have come from interstellar space to pay our system but a single visit, passing out again to traverse we know not what other systems or regions …. When we have said that these objects obey the law of gravity, we have mentioned the only circumstance—as it would appear—in which they conform to the relations observed in terrestrial and planetary arrangements. And even this law—the widest yet revealed to man—they seem to obey half unwillingly. We see the head of a comet tracing out systematically enough its proper orbit, while the comet’s tail is all unruly and disobedient …. The fact, then, is demonstrated that two of the meteor streams encountered by the earth are so far associated with two comets as to travel on the same orbits. We may not unsafely infer that all the meteor systems are in like manner associated with other comets. Nor is it very rash to assume that all comets are in like manner associated with meteor systems.”

Concerning the influence of gravitation of the planets, the same author says (“Meteoric Astronomy”), “Now, the circumstances under which a comet approaching the sun on a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit can be thus affected must be regarded as exceptional. The planet’s influence must, in the first place, be very energetically exercised; in other words, the arriving comet must pass very close to the planet, for under any other circumstances the sun’s influence so enormously outvies the planet’s that the figure of the cometic orbit would be very little affected. Moreover, the planet’s attraction must produce an important balance of retardation. The planet will inevitably accelerate the comet up to a certain point, and afterwards will retard it; the latter influence must greatly exceed the former. To show how greatly the comet must be retarded, it is only necessary to mention that the actual velocity of the November meteors when they cross the orbit of Uranus is less than one-third of the velocity with which Uranus himself travels, but their velocity at the same distance from the sun, when they were approaching him from some distant stellar domain, exceeded the velocity of Uranus in his orbit in the proportion of about seven to five …. It follows, not merely as a probable inference, but, I think, as a demonstrated conclusion, that if the November meteors came originally into our system as a comet travelling sunward from infinity, then either that comet was very compact or else Uranus captured only a small portion of the comet, the remaining portions moving thenceforth on orbits wholly different from the path of the November meteors …. No other planet than Uranus can have brought about the subjection of this comet to solar rule.” In his article on comets he says, “It may be well here to consider a case in which some active force (other than gravity) exerted by the sun seems to have brought the destruction of a comet, or at least to have broken up the comet into unrecognizable fragments.” He refers to Biela’s comet, with an orbital period of six and two-thirds years, and a path which was found to approach very near to the path of the earth. In 1832 the comet crossed the earth’s track several weeks before the arrival of the earth at the same point without appreciable interference. On its second return, in 1845–46, it was found to be divided into two comets travelling side by side; in 1852 they reappeared, still divided, and gradually diverging from each other. Since then they have never reappeared, though diligently sought for at every period. Professor Proctor adds, “It has been seen again, though not as a comet; nay, the occasion on which it was seen in the way referred to was predicted, and the prediction fulfilled, even in details. For a full account of its reappearance—as a meteor stream—I refer the reader to my essay on Biela’s comet in ‘Familiar Science Studies.’ ”