Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1876 — The Sun as the Source of Heat. [ARTICLE]

The Sun as the Source of Heat.

But if we suppose tbe sun and stars to be gigantic fountains of magnetic influence, centers of polarized force —attraction and repulsion—acting upon our globe and its atmosphere, and likewise upon all the other planets, the phenomena of the universe would then become susceptible of the grandest and simplest interpretation. To explain the effects of the sun there is not the least reason to infer that it is itself luminous or even warm. It may be one of the sources of heat without being itself hot, as heat is doubtless the product of combiued influences. This opinion may be elucidated by an examSle. Take a galvanic battery, which is a ark, cold machine; introduce a little acidified water into its cells and set it in action; by a proper arrangement of wires you may at a long distance from your battery produce a heat intense enough to fuse the hardest metals, and a light too vivid to be endured by the human eye. Now, if, while this result is being accomplished, we could see with enhanced powers of vision the action of the dilute acid on the metal plates of the galvanic battery, we should discover on their surface a process of rapid oxidation going on, analagous on a small scale to the commotion apparent on the face of the sun, which phenomenon might easily be mistaken for violent combustion, and which, in fact, judging; bv the impression made on the senses, could not readily be conceived to be anything else. Thus we learn that potent action generated in a dark, cold body, may produce great light and heat at a distance from the seat of activity; and what is thus wrought artificially in a small way by a galvanic battery may surely be done naturally, in a tremendous fashion, by the grand forces of the sun. When we gaze on Mont Blanc at sunset, if judgments were left to the untrained evidence of our senses, we might easily be led to believe that summit of the'mountain to be a luminous and incandescent pinnacle, passing through all the hues of the solar spectrum, and finally disappearing in a ghostly white: but knowledge and experience tell us a different tale and correct our inferences. We ascend the mountain, and we find a cold cone of snow! The appearance of Mont Blanc presented under this aspect is, however, so far distipct from that exhibited by the sun that the sunset brightness of Mont Blanc is a vision of momentarily-born illusion, whereas the light of the sun is the result of intense action and conversion of substances on its surface, and necessarily an originating force. In estimating the power, quantity and endurability of the light and heat of the sun, we must first know where the light and heat begin their evolution. If they . are a production bred in our atmosphere by the magnetic action of the sun, and the sun is only one of their causes, we must draw very different conclusions respecting the attributes of light and heat than if we credited the sun with the sole responsibility of their origin. The intense magnetic action of the sun may present on its surface and in its rays all the appearance of incandescence, when it is rendered visible here by means of our atmosphere and examined by instruments constructed for the detection of solar and astral phenomena. About the beginning of this centuiy the celebrated French philosopher Blot produced lieht by passing a current of electricity through air or a gas. Is it not reasonable inference that the sun does not waste light and heat —diminishing as the square of the resistance through a space of ninety millions of miles between us and itself, when by the means of etherial and atmospheric conditions the requisite quantity of light and heat might so easily be distributed at the rightspots where it'is needed ? With the conditions that surround us on the earth we cannot artificially produce light and heat without the destruction of some material substance; but we are not driven to assume that the same conditions prevail naturally in the sun; and even if a process of self-consumption were continually going on in that body, we are equally justified in drawing the inference that it possesses some infinite means and capacity of self-repair. We think, therefore, that we can naturally account for all the phenomena of heat and the appearance Of incandescence and flame on the surface of the sun, without resorting to the tremendous theoiy that the sun is actually in a state of combustion as understood in our terrestrial experience.— Frazier's Magazine.