Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1885 — The Sun’s Supply. [ARTICLE]

The Sun’s Supply.

From an article on “The Sun’s Energy,” by S. P. Langly, in the Century, we quote the following: “How is the heat maintained ? Not by the myracle of a perpetual self-sustained flame, we may be sure. But, then, by what fuel is such fed ? There can be no question of simple burning, like that of coal in the grate, for there is no source of supply adequate to the demand. The State of Pennsylvania, for instance, is underlaid by one of the richest coal fields of the world, capable of supplying the consumption of the whole country at its present rate for more than a thousand years to come. If the source of the solar heat (whatever that is) were withdrawn, and we were enabled to carry this coal there and shoot it into the solar furnace fast enough to keep up the known heat supply, so that £he radiation would go on at just its actual rate, the time which this coal would last is easily calculable. It would not last days or hours, but the whole of these coal beds would demonstrably be used up in rather less than one-thou-sandth of a second! We find by a similar calculation that if the sun were itself one solid block of coal, it would have burned out to the last cinder in less time than man has certainly been on the earth. But during historic times there has as surely been no noticeable diminution of tlie sun’s heat, for the olive and the vine grow just as they did 8,000 years ago, and the hypothesis of an actual burning becomes untenable. It has been supposed by some that meteors striking the solar surface might generate heat by their impact, jnst as a cannon ball fired against an armor plate causes a flash of light, and a heat so sudden and intense as to partially melt the ball at the instant of concussion. This is probably a real source of heat supply as far as it goes, but it cannot go very far; and, indeed, if our whole world should fall upon the solar surface like an immense projectile, gathering speed as it fell, and finally striking (as it wonld) with the force due to a rate, of over three hundred miles a second, the heat developed would Bupply the sun for but little more than sixty years, ”