The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1884-03-29

sand pounds weight at present.. man
who weighs only one hundred pounds
would in that case weigh thirty.three.
millions OF pounds, or would in fact
be crushed perfectly fat by his. own
yveiohf-y - - s-fe~ e-~r,~el -
II IS this tremendoss power residing
in the suns mass which enables him to
guide the planets IN Their paths 50 sB7sB-
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. s--r,
But again, neither size nor power
would make the sun a fit ruler Of fhd
solar system, without light TO illuminate
his family ofworlds and heat to warm
Them Let us see how much fight~nnd
how much heat the. sun gives ouDailthe
time. M. ~as
To get a 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 iseleven thousand sixhundred
times greater. Each squarcsqnile con-
tains about three millions of square
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 sun s surface, or in
round numbers 5000, 600, 600, 900, 900 !
600, 900 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-lautern pictures, and
more than one hundred times as much
light rs the small but intensely brilliant
electric arc when obtained of theutfnostl
possible splepdor. 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.
fheiheat given out by the sun is as.
great as we might expect when we see
this enormous emission of light. Ex-I
periments, made by Sir John Herschell
at one time and by M. Pouillet at
another, show that the heat falling on
single square mile only on the eartii's
surface-the sun being overhead
would melt twenty-six thousand tons of
ice in an hour. - .Q
Now the earth receives about fifty
million times as much heat as this. the
size of circle just large enough (setl
squarely to the suns rays) to shield the
earth from the sun being about fifty
millions of square miles. Butthe 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 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 suns surface is eleven thousand
eight hundred times larger than the
earth-by noting that il our earth's'
surface were as hot as the suns she
would give out every second as much
heat is would come from burning a
billion Chat is million million) tons of
coal. w
THE COMPOSITION OF THE SUN.
OF what is the sun, so vast and pow,
erful, SO hot and so brilliant, made? It
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 SUBJ
stances that form his glowing orb?
Yet science has done this, and that SO.
perfectly that we could scarcely be more
certain even if our observers had act
ually visited the sun and had brought
back part of his substance for examine
ton under the microscope or in chem
ical laboratories. ,.8
/ 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 vapors 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 or
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 suns
atmosphere. In another way, by mo-
ticing that certain tints are extra strong
in the suns light (instead of being alb
sent orfaint) it has been shown that
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 bv Eahricius Gal;1ao anJ