Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1889 — The Ice Lens and the Sun’s Nature. [ARTICLE]

The Ice Lens and the Sun’s Nature.

Dr. Henry Raymond Rogen, of Dunkirk, N: 1Y: before the Chautauqua Society: For example, the sun and earth are separated by the distance of 93,000,000 miles and this.space is indefinitely cold and dark. The sun’s rays as they pass through this infinity of distance and cold and darkness are invisible. They reach out from the sun to onr atmosphere without in the slightest manner revealing their presence. They contain neither warmth nor brightness. In fact, the temperature of the universal space is estimated by* Secchi at 18,000,000 degrees below zero (Fab.). Yet, notwithstanding the infinity of the distance which separates the sun and earth, and the cold and which pervade all space, the ice lens is able to gather these Invisible and inconceivably cold sun rays and converge them to a focus and thereby set fire to combustibles, explode gunpowder and even to melt lead. It mey not consistently be claimed that actual heat can cross the voi<| of space so cold, or that actual light penetrates such utier darkness. The ice lens of Metius, therefore, furnishishes a practical demonstration of the fact,-that the sun need not be actually hot, in order to warm the earth, and that it need not be essentially bright in order, to supply its light. It most forcibly teaches that there is something which incessantly comes from the sun which is not itself heat or light, but of which these are the direct effects. The legitimate inference from these teachings is that the so-called sunheat and sunlight are developed solely in our own atmosphere, and not in the sun itself, as science and superficial appearances have ever led us to believe.

The littfe ice lens, therefore, furnishes conclusive and even incontrovertible evidence against the so-called fireball theory of the sun, which is to-day and ever has been the theory accepted by science. The great significance and power of this wonderful invention lies, therefore, in the fact that if this evidence were accepted at its real value, it would aione, and unaided’ By corroborative fasts, compel a new explanation of the sun and its phenomena ab initio.- it would thus change the existing philosophy of the universe. ‘ ' ■ /