The Winslow mail., 1899-08-17
SUN NOT FIRE.
A New York Scientist Says 1t Fur
nishes Heat Through an Elec-
tric Current.

Henry Raymond Rogers, NJ. D., of
Dunkirk, n. Y, has evolved a new the
cry of the universe which, if adopted
! generally, will revolutionize astronom-
ical science, or at least that part of it
relating to the sun. From the days
of the star gazers of Palestine almost
| the popular notion regarding this cen
tral ruler of our family of planets has
| been that it is a great whirling globe
of molten material in constant and
| perpetual state of combustion. Now
comes the man from western New York
with the information that this idea is
false and that the conventional pic
| ture representing the sun with bright
lines radiating in all directions into
| space, thus implying that actual heat
and light are produced within, and of
the body itself is an utter absurdity
''This view of the sum- he says, lis
strangely inconsistent with and an
tagonistic to certain well-known cos
mical facts. Science teaches and dem
onstrates to be true that the universal
space is inconceivably cold and utter
darkness. a burning fire BALI sun
thus becomes an impossibility, an alb
surdity."
Rather should the sun be represent
ed, this philosopher maintains, as a
huge planet, like unto the earth, only
many times larger, perhaps even fit for
habitation, surrounded by darkness
and the stars, not on fire, but tre-
mendously electrical in it's activities; in
other words, vast celestial dynamo
producing currents of electricity which
pass invisible and free through all the
9O-odd millions of miles of cold and
darkness, until they meet their resist
ance at the earth and it's atmosphere.
Such resistance is all that is needed,
in the mind of this twentieth century
scientist, to develop the so-called sun
heat and sunlight just as light and
| heat are produced in the electric cur
rent by the resistance offered by car
bon or other material Arc lights, such
as stud our streets, are in effect the
planets fed by the sun. After eXcit-
ing our atmosphere to these and other
activities, the electric currents pass
into the earth, awakening in it grav-
itation and other electrical effects,
thence completing the circuit by re-
turning to the sun and arousing in it
identically the same functions as on
it's, humble satellite.
1t follows that if the sun emits
neither light nor heat, but simply elec-
trical currents which produce these
phenomena, it cannot longer be said
that the moon borrows from it's gentle
effulgence, and the poet loses a sub
| ject for some of his daintiest concep-
tions. What has been with him here
tofore a ''full-orbed glory becomes
simply a prosaic electrical machine
whose currents act on our atmosphere
| as do those from the sun, though to a
! less degree on account of difference in
power. Science, with it's newly-fOund
facts and progressive theories, has al
ways been destructive to old imagery,
| but the old delusions are far less po-
etic after all than their lccessors when
the poets minds nave become read
| iusted to them.
But, says the practical reader, "What
shall we say of the suns dazzle, which
is so real and so painful to the human
eye?" Simply an optical illusion, an
swers the new theory. ''Such dazzling
brightness cannot be located at the
sun, neither is it found in the
black of infinite space nor in
our atmosphere, therefore it can
be found only in the depths of
the eye of the beholder-i. e., upon
| 4 c. L.
such a thing as a moonbeam; that
which seems such is simply an illusion
and is no more real than the existence
Of actual spots upon the surface of the
sun! Dear, dear!-Boston Transcript.