McClure's Magazine December, 1895

by Unknown

I thought the best way to explain the little delusion under which the worthy gardener labored was to refer him to what takes place in his own domain. I asked him wherein lies the advantage of putting his tender plants into his greenhouse in November. How does that preserve them through the winter? How is it that even without artificial heat the mere shelter of the glass will often protect plants from frost? I explained to him that the glass acts as a veritable trap for the sunbeams; it lets them pass in, but it will not let them escape. The temperature within the greenhouse is consequently raised, and thus the necessary warmth is maintained. The dwellers on this earth live in what is equivalent, in this respect, to a greenhouse. There is a copious atmosphere above our heads, and that atmosphere extends to us the same protection which the glass does to the plants in the greenhouse. The air lets the sunbeams through to the earth's surface, and then keeps their heat down here to make us comfortable. When you climb to the top of a high mountain you pass through a large part of the air. This is the reason why you feel warmer on the surface of the earth than you do on the top of a high mountain. If, however, it were possible to go very much closer to the sun; if, for example, the earth were to approach within half its present distance, it is certain that the heat would be so intense that all life would be immediately scorched away.

It will be remembered that when Nebuchadnezzar condemned the unhappy Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be cast into the burning fiery furnace, he commanded in his fury that the furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated. Let us think of the hottest furnace which the minions of Nebuchadnezzar could ever have kindled with all the resources of Babylon; let us think indeed of one of the most perfect of modern furnaces, in which even a substance so refractory as steel, having first attained a dazzling brilliance, can be melted so as to run like water; let us imagine the heat-dispensing power of that glittering liquid to be multiplied sevenfold; let us go beyond Nebuchadnezzar's frenzied command, and imagine the efficiency of our furnace to be ten or twelve times as great as that which he commanded—we shall then obtain a notion of a heat-giving power corresponding to that which would be found in the wonderful celestial furnace, the great sun in heaven.

SIR ROBERT BALL.

Ponder also upon the stupendous size of that orb, which glows at every point of its surface with the astonishing fervor I have indicated. The earth on which we stand is no doubt a mighty globe, measuring as it does eight thousand miles in diameter; yet what are its dimensions in comparison with those of the sun? If the earth be represented by a grain of mustard seed, then on the same scale the sun should be represented by a cocoanut. Perhaps, however, a more impressive conception of the dimensions of the great orb of day may be obtained in this way. Think of the moon, the queen of the night, which circles monthly around our heavens, pursuing, as she does, a majestic track, at a distance of two hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth. Yet the sun is so vast that if it were a hollow ball, and if the earth were placed at the centre of that ball, the moon could revolve in the orbit which it now follows, and still be entirely enclosed within the sun's interior.

For every acre on the surface of our globe there are more than ten thousand acres on the surface of the great luminary. Every portion of this illimitable desert of flame is pouring forth torrents of heat. It has indeed been estimated that if the heat which is incessantly flowing through any single square foot of the sun's exterior could be collected and applied beneath the boilers of an Atlantic liner, it would suffice to produce steam enough to sustain in continuous movement those engines of twenty thousand horse-power which enable a superb ship to break the record between Ireland and America.

The solar heat is shot forth into space in every direction, with a prodigality which seems well-nigh inexhaustible. No doubt the earth does intercept a fair supply of sunbeams for conversion to our many needs; but the share of sun-heat that the dwelling-place of mankind is able to capture and employ forms only an infinitesimal fraction of what the sun actually pours forth. It would seem, indeed, very presumptuous for us to assume that the great sun has come into existence solely for the benefit of poor humanity. The heat and light daily lavished by that orb of incomparable splendor would suffice to warm and illuminate, quite as efficiently as the earth is warmed and lighted, more than two thousand million globes each as large as the earth. If it has indeed been the scheme of nature to call into existence the solar arrangements on their present scale for the solitary purpose of cherishing this immediate world of ours, then all we can say is that nature carries on its business in the most outrageously wasteful manner.

What should we think of the prudence of a man who, having been endowed with a splendid fortune of not less than twenty million dollars, spent one cent of that vast sum usefully and dissipated every other cent and every other dollar of his gigantic wealth in mere aimless extravagance? This would, however, appear to be the way in which the sun manages its affairs, if we are to suppose that all the solar heat is wasted save that minute fraction which is received by the earth. Out of every twenty million dollars' worth of heat issuing from the glorious orb of day, we on this earth barely secure the value of one single cent; and all but that insignificant trifle seems to be utterly squandered. We may say it certainly is squandered so far as humanity is concerned. No doubt there are certain other planets besides the earth, and they will receive quantities of heat to the extent of a few cents more. It must, however, be said that the stupendous volume of solar radiation passes off substantially untaxed into space, and what may actually there become of it science is unable to tell.

And now for the great question as to how the supply of heat is sustained so as to permit the orb of day to continue in its career of such unparalleled prodigality. Every child knows that the fire on the domestic hearth will go out unless the necessary supplies of wood or coal can be duly provided. The workman knows that the devouring blast furnace requires to be incessantly stoked with fresh fuel. How, then, comes it that a furnace so much more stupendous than any terrestrial furnace can continue to pour forth in perennial abundance its amazing stores of heat without being nourished by continual supplies of some kind? Professor Langley, who has done so much to extend our knowledge of the great orb of heaven, has suggested a method of illustrating the quantity of fuel which would be required, if indeed it were by successive additions of fuel that the sun's heat had to be sustained. Suppose that all the coal seams which underlie America were made to yield up their stores. Suppose that all the coal fields of England and Scotland, Australia, China, and elsewhere were compelled to contribute every combustible particle they contained. Suppose, in fact, that we extracted from this earth every ton of coal it possesses, in every island and in every continent. Suppose that this vast store of fuel, which is adequate to supply the wants of this earth for centuries, were to be accumulated in one stupendous pile. Suppose that an army of stokers, arrayed in numbers which we need not now pause to calculate, were employed to throw this coal into the great solar furnace. How long, think you, would so gigantic a mass of fuel maintain the sun's expenditure at its present rate? I am but uttering a deliberate scientific fact when I say that a conflagration which destroyed every particle of coal contained in this earth would not generate so much heat as the sun lavishes abroad to ungrateful space in the tenth part of every single second. During the few minutes that the reader has been occupied over these lines, a quantity of heat which is many thousands of times as great as, the heat which could be produced by the ignition of all the coal in every coal-pit in the globe has been dispersed and totally lost to the sun.

But we have still one further conception to introduce before we shall have fully grasped the significance of the sun's extravagance in the matter of heat. As the sun shines to-day on this earth, so it shone yesterday, so it shone a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago; so it shone in the earliest dawn of history; so it shone during those still remoter periods when great animals flourished which have now vanished forever; so it shone during that remarkable period in earth's history when the great coal forests flourished; so it shone in those remote ages many millions of years ago when life began to dawn on an earth which was still young. There is every reason to believe that throughout these illimitable periods which the imagination strives in vain to realize, the sun has dispensed its radiant treasures of light and warmth with just the same prodigality as that which now characterizes it.