News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-12-14
SPOTS ON THE sun.
Little Matter in the way of Science that
will be Understood.

| Little Matter in the way of Science thai
will be Understood.
1t is generally agreed to by scientific
men that the spots on the sun are the
primary cause of the magnetic storms
that have lately taken place. These
spots or chasms on the suns surface are
no mean affairs. The philosopher of the
New York .St01 says that, Counting the
whole surface covered by the various
nuclei and the penumbral net in which
they appear to be entangled, it is not
less than $4,000 miles long by 10000
miles wide. Take all the continents and
islands of the earth together, add tc
them all the oceans, and spread the
whole out flat5 and they would not cover
one-twelfth of the area included in that
tremendous congeries of sun chasms.''
$50 those queerly-shaped black spots
are holes in the sun, are they ?' asked
the reporter.
"Yes, replied the astronomer.
"And what Is the shadowy veil that
surrounds them ?"
surface, but not so deep as the black
holes"
What are the white ridges around
the spot?"
Mountains of fire, or perhaps I
should rather say pillows, in comparison
with the size of which the Himalavas OF
the Andes are rows of mere ant-hills,"
What are those white feathery-look-
ing points projecting here and there
over the chasms ?"
"Clouds in which iron and other metals
are floating in the form of metallic vapor
What do you suppose you could see if
you could stand upon one of those pro-
jecting points suspended over sun
chasm ?"
The reporter couldn't tell.
Let us make the absurd supposition
that your body would not in the mil
honth part of a second be turned into
vapor," said the astronomer. "and let
us also suppose that you could for an in
slant retain conscious existence amid the
crash and roar of solar action, where the
noise of the bursting of a world into
fragments would be indistinguishable
from the universal clangor, and [ will
try to give you notion of what you
would see. Your horizon, supposing that
Immediately around you comparative
quiet could prevail, would be circle o
fire, heaving, tossing, squirting, casting
up showers of hot metallic spray, while
here and there fiery geysers, shot up
with inconceivable velocity, would rise
thousand, ten thousand, twenty thou
sand miles, and condensing, fall back in an
unimaginable blazing rain. The sides
of the chasm over which you hung, gap
ing wide enough to swallow this whole
EARTH would appear as cataracts of glow
ing vapors, partially condensed and
tumbling downward to an awful depth.
Some students of the sun have attempted
to measure, or rather to approximately
estimate, the depth of sun spots, and
they put it at from 1000 to 5000 miles
In the case of so large a spot as this
one we may safely assume that its
depth is equal to the maximum esti-
mate.
''You would behold cyclonic motions
in this sea of fire producing fearful whirl-
pools, and the rushing and clashing of
vaporized elements, driven by hurricanes
that would make playthings of mountains.
The fiery cloud bridge upon which you
stood would be likely to be shattered to
at any time. Ihave seen such
bridges disappear in a few minutes.
Then, if you fell into the chasm, still as
summing that you would not instantly be
turned to vapor, you would, after your
tumble of 5000 miles, strike no bottom
ON which a foot could be planted, but
would sink into mass Of fiery gases, in
which, probably, all of the elements that
the solid earth would be repre-
scented.
Gas you sank lower and lower the gases,
while yet retaining their other proper
ties, would resist your descent like an
ocean of tar, the effect of the tremendous
and pressure to which they
are subjected"
''But would I find nothing besides gas
in the sun % the reporter asked.
Probably not" the astronomer, re-
piled, but you must recollect that this
is a matter of theory. Astronomers are
only rtying to account for what they see
in ways that appear most consistent and
1t is long step from the
gaseous theory of the sun which is now
widely accepted, though in somewhat
varied forms, to the theory of Sir
William Herschel, that the body of the
sun is a cool, inhabitable world, separat-
ed from the glowing surface which we see
by a protecting atmosphere. But no.
body holds that theory now. The tabled
would find the sun too hot
for place of residence, and the deeper
he got the worse it would be.