Semi-weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1852-1853, 1853-02-16
From Harper's New Monthly Magazine
THE SOLAR SYSTEM


day and night The highest mountains range tron
four to five miles in height; the greatest depth 9
the ocean is probably little more than 1--WE miles
although Ross let down $4,000 feet OF sounding
line in vain on one occasion. SO that the earth
surface is very irregular but its mountainous ridge
and oceanic valleys are no greater things Ill pro
norton TO its whole bulk, than the roughness o
the rind of the orange it resembles in shape IhE
peoorical crust-that is to say the total depth te
which biologists suppose themselves to have reach
ed in the way of observations no thickerln pro
portion than sheet of writing paper pasted on
Globe two feet in diameter. The surface OF the
earth is some las, 5OO.OOO of miles in extent; and
only one-fourth of that large space IS dry lana
the rest being ocean and ice. Inc atmosphere
rises all round to height between forty-nVe ana
tiftv miles above the sea-level. The solar radiance
sends such heat as it brings no deeper any where
than 100 feet into the surface scurtskln OF the
dry Iand-from forty to a hundred feet, one-thrd
of the suns heat being absorbed by the ar. let
the deeper man digs beyond the hundred feet, the
warmer he finds the earth, and that at some
what determinabe rate of increase. Supposng
that rate of increment to go on toward the centre
it is computabe that the solid underworld OF the
world say granite by way of conjecture, must be
in state of fusion at no vast depth from the ground
on which we tread. Let scientific Imagination de-
scend little lower and it will find the melted
granite in the form Of fiery rapor or g;as-the dry
steam of q red-hot liquid in which the rock-bult
foundations of "the everlasting hills" melt like
icebergs But this is conjectura and probable, and
probable, not observable and proved.
Far away from this spinning and perlous globe
of ours, at the distance of some 95,O0O,OOO m'es,
stands the sun. A ray IF light starting from his
surface at any given moment, takes eight minutes
to reach u.s. although light runs at the speed OF
$4,000 miles in a second. The sun is l,3S0,OOO
times as large as the earth, and $500 times as
heavy but the stuff of which he Is made Is just
about fourth part as dense the average matter
of this world. The sun is of as light substance,
taking his whole body, as coal; whereas the earth
is twice as heavy as birthstone, striking the mean
between the air. the ocean, the dry land, and the
internal vapor The sun has atmosphere Ike
the earth, or rather he has two. One Of them,
close upon his solid surface seems to resemble our
own: it bears cloudy bodies in its upper levels. |
The other is a sort of fiery gas, surrounding the !
former, kindled and sustained in the calorifc and
luminous state, no man knows can conjecture !
how Storms in the lower atmosphere con- |
stantly blowing this phosphorescent airy envelope
aside, so as to afford lis glimpses down. into the
Comparatively dark and black recesses beneath.
These are the spots on the sun. Calico inferred |
the rotation of the sun on his axis from the mo-
tons of those spots. The explanation of those
spots afforded by the discoveries of Wilson and
Herchel dimnshes the value of the inference but
20 Coperncan can doubt that the is forever
turning, and that with unimaginable swiftness and
impetuosity. |:
At the distance, them of more than ninety-fve
millions of miles, this dim spot which men call |;
earth, this great globe and all its jewellers, this
ever-spinning planet, revoves around the sun once
every year, that revolution being both the cause
and the measure of that space OF time. It's orbitsf
is not CIRCLE it Is ellipse but not very far re-
moved from the circular path The terrestrial axis
is not at right angles, to that epsc, else there
were no seasons; it is somewhat inclined. The
earth, regarded as the fixed and solid centre
of creation is to be conceived of as globular
sphere of some fre-blown stream, bounded by !
film of rock like asoap-bubble, carrying an unrest
ing sea in the hollows of its rnd, swathed in soft
cause of air, going round upon itself every day. :
running round the every year: and all that
with much silence security, and stiffness of speed
that nobody suspects the dread predcament g,
of physical circumstance in which lie wakes and i
sleeps lives and dies, does good or evil and passes
away to judgment. 1t is difficult to realize the Il
TRUTH now that it is told for the knowledge of the
intellect is one thing and the consent of the whole
man is quite another. -
Precisely as the earth goes round the sun from
year to year, the moon goes round the earth from t.
month to month, and that at distance of tome q
100000 miles the same lunar side or hemisphere
being always turned toward Us, although that b
satellite turns upon her own axis as well as the +
earth and the sun. The earth is in repose SO far
Is the moon is concerned it is her sun. The two n
'om blned, being as true unity as any chemical O.
nolecuie which is composed of two atoms 90 round
he sun as if they one the earth carries her
noon with her. So that it is possible if not pro- Il
'abe in the first instance, that the sum- though in i
epose to the earth and her moon land indeed. If
0 all the planets yet to be mentioned) may he in n
notion on some vast orbit of his own an orbit =,
long which he carries all his planetary adkerents M
With him, just rs the earth takes her moon round m
he SUM- 1t IS curious to perceive how not only in NJ
ne case OF our own MOON but in the cases Of the
Moons Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus and actually ~
those OF all the planets considered as the moons I'll
the sun, the Patonic epicycle really holds good m
he earth turns on her heel, with the moon held
ut at arms length, while she goes round the am
hitbeatre before the solar eye; so do the other In
loon-bearers. So does the sun himself upon a O.
aster arena and before greater spectator, like al
mother Briareus holding out his seventeen plan T
S, and nobody knows how many comets, in his oh
undred hands. The moons, of those solar plan ye
s which have them, represent the epi-epicycIica sp
rblts OF the Ptolemaic theory 1t is curious and af
$50 touching to notice how often the errors of man les
re thus the shadows of truth. Were it not for lie,
lie preceding shadows, indeed the substance would m
ever arrive; and therefore the Ptoemaics of the a
orld are second, IN value and in merit only to he
oochal discoveries like Copernicus ty
Suppose the sun to be represented By radiant su
tile orb two feet IN diameter in order to bring it
ithn the measure Of our eye then this great globe