THE FUEL OF THE SUN.
I offer the following sketch of the main argument which is worked out more fully in the essay I published in January, 1870, under the above title, hoping that many who hesitate to plunge into a presumptuous speculative work of more than 200 octavo pages may read this article, and reflect upon the subject.
The book has been handled in a most courteous and indulgent spirit by all the reviewers who have noticed it, but none have ventured to grapple with the argument it contains, although every possible opportunity and provocation for doing so is designedly afforded. It all rests upon the question which is discussed in the first three chapters, viz., whether the atmosphere which surrounds our earth is limited or unlimited in extent? If my reasoning upon this fundamental question is refuted, all that follows necessarily falls to the ground. If I am right, all our standard treatises on pneumatics and meteorology, which repeat the arguments contained in Dr. Wollaston’s celebrated paper, must be remodeled. At the outset, I reprint that paper, and point out a very curious and monstrous fallacy which, for half a century, remained undetected, and had been continually repeated.
As the main point of issue between myself and Dr. Wollaston is merely a question of very simple arithmetic and geometry, nothing can be easier than to set me right if I am wrong; and, as the philosophical consequences depending upon this issue are of vast and fundamental importance, the question cannot be ignored by those who stand before the world as scientific authorities, without a practical abdication of their philosophical responsibilities. Any man who publishes an astronomical or meteorological treatise without discussing this question, which stands before him at the threshold of his subject, is unfit for the task he has undertaken, and unworthy of public confidence. This may appear a strong conclusion just now, but a few years will be sufficient to graft it firmly into the growth of scientific public opinion.[1]
“The Fuel of the Sun” is simply an attempt to trace some of the consequences which must of necessity result from the existence of an universal atmosphere, and it differs from other attempts to explain the great solar mystery, by making no demands whatever upon the imagination, inventing nothing,—no outside meteors, no new forces or materials. It supposes nothing whatever to exist but the known facts of the laboratory—the familiar materials of the earth and its atmosphere. It is shown that these materials and the forces residing within them must of necessity produce a sun, and manifest eternally all the observed solar phenomena, provided only they are aggregated in the quantities which our own central luminary presents, and are surrounded by attendant planets, such as his. Nothing is assumed or taken for granted beyond the simple fundamental hypothesis that the laws of nature are uniform throughout the universe. The argument thus conducted leads us step by step to a natural and connected explanation of the following important phenomena:—
1. The sources of solar and stellar heat and light.
2. The means by which the present amount of solar heat and light must be maintained so long as the solar system continues in existence.
3. The origin of the general and particular phenomena of the sun-spots.
4. The cause of the varying splendor of the photosphere, including such details as the “faculæ,” “mottling,” “granulations,” etc., etc.
5. The forces which upheave the solar prominences.