The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-04-10
Scientist Says 1t Furnishes Heat to the
Earth by Electric Currents.

Scientist Says 1t Furnishes Heat to the
Earth by Electric Currents.
Henry Raymond Rogers, M. d., OF
Dunkirl1, N. Y, has evolved new
theory of the universe which, if adopt
ed generally, will revolutionize astron-
omical 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
trail ruler of our family of planets has
been that it is a great whirling globe
Of molten material in a 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 picture
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 absurd1ty.
This view of the sum- he says, is
strangely inconsistent with and antag-
onistic to certain well known cosmical
facts. Science teaches and demon
'strates 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
many times larger, perhaps even fit
for habitation surrounded by darkness
and the stars, not on fire but tremend-
ously electrical in it's activities: in other
words, a vast celestial dynamo produc-
ing currents of electricity which pass
invisible and free through all the
ninety-o 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 sun light, just as light and
heat are produced in the electric cur
rent by the resistance offered by carbon
| or other material. Arc lights. such as
stud our streets, are in effect the plan
cts fed by the sun. After exciting our at
| mosphere to these and other activities,
| the electric sun currents pass into the
earth, awaking in it gravitation and
| other electrical effects, thence complet-
| ing the circuit by returning to the sun
and arousing in it identically the same
| functions as on it's humble satellite.
1t follows that if the sun emits mel
Their light nor hrat, but simply electric
currents which produce these phenom-
ena, it can no longer be said that the
moon borrows from it is gentle efful-
gence and the poet loses a subject fol-
some Of his daintiest conceptions What
|
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 &C.
count of difference in power. Science
with its newly found facts and progress
sive theories, has always been destruc-
tive of old imagery, but the old delu
sions are far less poetic after all than
their successors when the poets minds
have become readjusted 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 in.
finite space nor in our atmosphere
therefore it can only be found in the
depths of the eye of the beholder-i
e., upon the retina." &c. too, there /:
no longer such a thing as a moonbeam
that which seems such Is simply an il
fusion and is no more real than the ex
istence of actual spots upon the sur
face of the sun! Dear, dear!-Chicagt
| Chronicle