The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-01-26


/ force as three hundred and thirty thou
who weighs only one hundred pounds
would in that case weigh thirty-three
millions of pounds, or would in fact
be crushed perfectly fiat by his own
weight.
1t is this tremendous power residing
in the sum- mass which enables him to
guide the planets in their paths so that
they never retreat too far away from
| him and so receive too little heat, nor
draw too close to him so as to receive
too much.
| LIGHT AND HEAT.
But again, neither size nor power
would make the sun fit ruler of the
solar system, without light to illuminate
his family of worlds and heat to warm
them. Let us see how much light and
how much heat the sun gives out all the
time.
To get good idea of the suns light
we must remember his enormous extent
of surface. The earth's surface contains
two hundred millions of square miles;
the suns is eleven thousand six hundred
times greater. Each square mile con-
/ IdlIS dUOuU IIlEtC IuIlllOlS Vi SUudIc
yards, each square yard about one thou
sand three hundred square inches;
whence it follows that there are roughly
eleven thousand six hundred times two
hundred MILLION times three million
times one thousand three hundred
square inches in the suns surface, or in
round numbers 5000, 600, 900, 100000 :
100000 square inches.
Now each of these gives out about six
hundred times as much light as the
glowing piece of lime in the oxhydro-
gen lantern used to obtain brilliantly
Illuminated magic-lantern pictures, and
more than one hundred times as much
light as the small but intensely brilliant
electric arc when obtained of the utmost
possible splendor. The whole surface
of the sun gives out instant by instant at
least as much light as million millions
of millions of millions of electric lights.
The heat given out by the sun is as
great as we might expect when we see
this enormous emission of light, EX-
periments made by Sir John Herschel
at one time and by NJ. Pouillet at
another, show that the heat falling on
a single square mile only on the earth s
surface-the sun being overhead
would melt twenty-siX thousand tons of
ice in an hour.
Now the earth receives about fifty
million times as much heat as this, the
size of a circle just large enough (set
sQuarely to the suns rays) to shield the
earth from the sun being about fifty
millions of square miles. But the earth
only captures about one two thousand
millionth part of all the heat which the
sun emits Thus the total heat given
out by the sun IN an hour would melt
two thousand six hundred millions of
millions of millions of tons of ice in an
hour. This corresponds to what would
result from burning eleven thousand
eight hundred millions of millions of
tons of coal in a second
We can find Gas it chances) a ready
aid to the memory at least if we re-
member, what has been already shown,
that the sun s surface is eleven thousand
eight hundred times larger than the
earthly noting that ii our earth S
surface were Us hot as the suns she
would give out every second as much
heat us would come from burning a
billion (that is amillion million) tons of
coal.
THE COMPOSITION OF THE SUN.
OF what is the sun, so vast and pow
erful, so hot and so brilliant, made? 1t
might seem hopeless to ask. Who
= could traverse, even in imagination,
the vast space that separates our world
: from him and bring back news. across
the mighty gulf, of the various sub
stances that form his glowing orb?
Yet science has done this, and that sc
perfectly that we could scarcely be more
certain even if our observers had act
uallv visited the sun and had brought
back part Of his substance for examine
ton under the microscope or in chem.
ical laboratories.
cannot here fully explain how this
has been done But | may say so much
as this: The light of the sun contains
rays of all the colors of the rainbow
and method has been invented for sep,
arating the red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo and violet rays from each
other. When this is done it is found
that rays of certain tints are missing
from the light of the sun. Now, some
of these missing tints are known to be
those which certain yapors and gases
have the power of absorbing, as, for in
stance, the yapors of iron, zinc, cop
, per and so forth, the gas hydrogen and
other substances in the vaporous OF
gaseous form. We thus learn that these
, substances are in the atmosphere OF
: the. sun, much as the vapor of water and
, the gases oxygen and nitrogen are
) present in the atmosphere of the earth;
that is, in the air we breathe.
1t has thus been shown that hydro
gen, sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron
aluminium, manganese, chromium, co.
bait, nickel, zinc, copper, titanium and
other elements are present in the sun (
atmosphere. In another way, by no
ticing that certain tints are extra strong
in the SUMS light (instead of being alb
sent or fainD it has been shown thai
oxygen is present (and probably also
nitrogen) in the atmosphere of the sun
, as in our own.
SUN SPOTS.
The spots on the sun were first dis
covered by Fabricius, Calico and
Schener in the year 1910. At first the
spots were thought to be opaque bodies
travelling round the sun; but after
, awhile it was seen that they move in
such way as 70 show that they are on
his surface Tins If was found thai