Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1868-11-06
Heat and Light.

THE established doctrine is that heat
and light are propelled from the solar orb
out equally into all parts Of surrounding
space, and fall upon earth and other plan
cts just as (and no more than) they do
upon any waste part of the sky. And
these rays of heat and light, we are told,
decrease rapidly alike in number and in
power, diminishing with the square of the
distance from their source, the sun. But
is it so?
Ascend in balloon, and what do we
find? Do heat and light increase in in
tensity as we rise in the air nearest to the
sun? BY no means. Six miles up all heat
is gone. The thermometer is at zero, and
hoar-frost gathers on every cord of the
rigging of the air ship. How can this be,
if heat comes down to us in diminishing
force from the sun? If that were true,
heat ought to increase rapidly as we ascend
nearer to the sun, the source of it. Even
light, though exceeding pure-the air be-
ing there free from the aqueous element
is less intense in those airy attitudes.
Look up from the car of the balloon into
the abyss of the sky above, and what do
we see? A bright dazzle comes from the
spot of the heav ems where the sun is but
he is shorn of his rays. All around the
sky overhead is of deep azure, like the
color of Prussian blue-a we'll known sign
of light imperfectly developed; just as we
see in the fame of candle or gas jet, at the
part of imperfect combustion-or, to take
better example, just as the blue flash of
the electric machine becomes yellow or
white light when the power of the machine
is increased. There is little light in
the air at those attitudes; the moment
the prism, by the gyrations of the car, is
inclined always from the direct rays Of
the sun, there is no spectrum at all. Man
ifesJly, then, neither heat nor light comes
to us from the sun in the manner supposed
namely, travelling down to us through
the empty waste of space, and decreasing
with the square of the distance. For, if
this were the fact, both heat and light
would increase rapidly with the lessening
distance as we ascend-whereas light d.
minishes, and heat wholly disappears!
Calmly considered, these facts of them
selves not only upset the common theory,
but suggest the true one. Heat and light
are generated, spring into existence, with
in the sphere of our own planet. No
heat or light in the wastes of space. Heat
there can be none, seeing that the Their
mometer falls to zero only six miles
above earth's surface.
ana ugnL, LOO, eVluenIly IaueS away IN
thin blue luminosity in these upper re-
gions where the terrestrial gases, the ex-
halations of the solid earth, become atten-
uated-where probably metre into pure
hydrogen, and into that most subtle subli-
nation of matter which we call ether,
which is even in the vacuum of an air
pump.
The daylight, I say, is the offspring of
our own planet impregnated-so to speak
by the solar orb Our heat and light
are generated within the domain of earth
ITSELF A cosmical force, which we call
gravitation or attraction-and which is
more or less inherent in all matter-comes
from the sum- and that force or influence
becomes light and heat when it enters and
acts upon the atmosphere-the. gaseous
and ethereal envelope which surrounds
the planets. Belgra0aG Magazine.