Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-06-04
TTE @UN74 E|EH0|'
upssuiations on shs Dutaaaen .1 x.slS aai

L|.Ia
 There is boundary Co the prospect of tho continuance of tha sums radiar tion. Of course. as the lossof heat goes on, the gaseous parts will turn into liquids, and as the process is still fur ther protracted, the liquids will trans | form into solids. Thus we look for ward to time when tho radiation of | the sun can be no longer conducted in conformity with the laws which dictate | the loss of heat from a gaseous body. l When this state ia reached the sun may, | no doubt, be an incandescent solid with ! a bri1liance as great as is compatible | with that condition, but the further | loss of heat will then involve loss of | temperature. At the present time the | body may be SO far gaseous that the ' temperature of the sun remains abso- 1utely constant. It may even be the case that the temperature of the sun, notwithstanding the undoubted loss of heat, is absolutely rising.
 It is, however, incontrovertible that a certain maximum temperature having been reached (whether we have yet reached 1t or not we do not know), tenn perature will then necessarily decline. There Is certainly no doubt whatever that the sun, which is now losing heat, even if not actually falling in -tempera- ture, must, at some time, begin to lose it's temperature. Then, of course, it's capacity for radiating heat will begin to abate. The heat received by the earth from the great center of our sys- tenn must, of course, decline. There seems no escape from the conclusion that the continuous loss of solar heat must still go on, 50 that the sun will pass through the various stages of bril- liant incandescence, of glowing redness, of dull redness, until it ultimately be- comes a dark and non-luminous star. In this final state the sun will liter ally join the majority. Every analogy would teach us that the dark and non- luminous bodies in the universe are far more numerous than the brilliant suns. We can never see the dark objects, we
 can discern their presence only indi- rectly. All the stars that we can see are merely those bodies which at this epoch of their career happen for the time to be so highly heated as to be luminous.
 There is thus distinct limit to mans | existence on the earth, dictated by the ultimate exhaustion of the sun. It is, | of course, a question of much interest for us to speculate on the probable du- ration of the suns beams in sufficient abundance for the continued mainten- \ ance of life. Perhaps the most reliable determinations are those which have been made by Prof. Langley. They are
 based on his own experiments upon the
 intensity of solar radiation, conducted
 under circumstances that give them
 special value. I shall endeavor to give N IA "A
 which he has arrived. The utmost amount of heat that it would ever have been possible for the sun to have con-
 tained would supply its radiation for
 eighteen million years at the present rate. Of course, this does not assert
 that the sun, as radiant body, may not
 be much older than the period named.
 We have already seen that the rate at
 which the sunbeams are poured forth
 has gradually increased as the sun rose
 in temperature. In the early times the
 quantity of sunbeams dispensed was
 much less per annum than at present,
 and it is, therefore, quite possible that
 the figures may be so enlarged as
 to meet the requirements of any reason
 able geological demand with regard tc
 past duration of life on the earth.
 It seems that the sun has already dis sipated about four-hfths of the energy
 with which it may have originally been
 endowed. At all events, it seems that,
 radiating energy at it's present rate, the
 sun may hold out for four million years
 or for five million years, but not for ter
 million years. Here then we discern in
 the remote future a limit of the dura-
 tion of life on this globe. We have seen
 that it does not seem possible for any
 other source of heat to be available fol replenishing the waning stores of the
 luminary. It may be that the heat was
 originally imparted to the sun as the
 result of some great collision between
 two bodies which were both dark before
 the collision took place, so that, in fact
 the two dark masses coalesced into 2
 vast nebula from which the whole O. our system has been evolved. Of course it is always conceivable that the sur [ may be reinvigorated by a repetition O } a similar startling process. It is, how
 ever, hardly necessary to observe that so terrific convulsion would be fata
 to life in the solar system. Neither
 from the heavens above, nor from the earth beneath, does it seem possible tt discover any rescue for the human ract 2 from the inevitable end. The race is al } mortal as the individual, and, so far a ) we know, it's span cannot under any l circumstances be run out beyond a mum : Der of millions of years which can cer &ainly be told on the fingers on botl
 hands, and probably on the fingers o one.-Robert s. Ball, in Fortnight.
 Review.