The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-01-14


One CT our cable dispatches is OF pecu-
liar interest to the scientific world, but also
of great interest to that large part OF the
general public which watches with admira-
tion and wonder the vast additions made in
our time to the exact knowledge OF tho
| physical universe Mr.. j. Norman Lock
YER whose remarkable discoveries in the
| spectroscopic examination OF the sun nave
made him justly famous, claims to have
I made one more step in advance in the solu-
ton of the mysteries of solar phenomena.
An outline of his statement just enough
to whet the appetite of the scientific world
| for the fuller statement itself when it shall
be put forth-has been given to our Lon
don correspondent, and the new views
it contains appear to be presented
as convictions reached from q study of the
observations made in the eclipse of the sun
last year. 1t deals with the constitu-
ton of the solar chromosphere, suggests a
theory of the corona, an argument in sup
port of Secchi's views Of the sun spots and
a theory OF "the solar phenomena in their
totality." Apparently these are all the re-
suit of further details in spectroscopic
study. Mr.. Lockyer and the French
astronomer, Jansen, made nearly at the
same time, in the year 1868, the discovery
that the luminous protuberances beyond
the corona seen when the sun il in eclipse,
could be examined in the spectroscopo, and
that so examined they showed the lines of
the spectrum of hydrogen gas. At once the
study Of the chemical constitution of the
sun and other planets was seen to be posi-
BILE, and has been since pursued with great
zeal by means of the same instru-
ment. Many lines seen in this examina-
ton were not susceptible Unsatisfactory clas-
sifcation, were in fact chemical mysteries
Professor Lockyers first statement refers
to some of these, which he is now inclined
to accept as indications of the imperfection
of our present chemical Acknowledgements
dences that some fourteen substances now
classified as elements are not elementary,
but are compounds. 1t should be remem-
bered that the spectroscope has before this
pointed the way Tor chemical discovery, and
has indicated the existence of metals not
previously known to us. That this process
may be now repeated on grander scale is
reasonable. An old proverb, that we
must go away from home to get
news of our neighbors, is strikingly
exemplifed in our getting from the
sun hints for the prosecution of our
study of earthly substances. But Mr..
Lockyer's suggestion of sort of gaseous
circulation on the surface of the sun bids
fair to be the most remarkable result of his
studies. This is practically a theory that
the sun is an enormous permanent reser-.
voir of gases in chemical combustion, but
whose combustion is SO ordered that ex-
haustion is impossible. Our atmospheric
circulation may illustrate the process as it
seems to be stated. Ii an inhabitant of the
sun were told that the seas on our earth
were continually vaporzed by the sun he
might say, eft cannot be, for they do not
become exhausted" But if he learned of
the return, in the form of rain, of all that
vaporized water, one fact would explain the
other. Somewhat analogous are the two
points in the history of the sun stated in
the despatch-dischargs by combustion
of it's elements at the level of the photo
sphere, their projection to higher level and
their return in new associations, or in the
old ones repeated, from this higher level
that, in short, all the unexplained appear
ances on the surface Of the sun are due to
constant projection of gaseous elements in
one state and a constant fiery rain made by
their return in another state.