The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-11-29
SPOTS ON THE SUN NOT
 PROPHETS OF DISASTER

Cambridge, Mass, November 2S.-Sun spots may come and sun spots may go, but despite the numerous terrifying the ories advanced and partly supported dur ing the last half century, it is the opinion of the best known modern astronomers such men, among many others, as Profess sor C. A. Young of Princeton Professor s. P. Langley, the well known American authority on solar physics; or Professor E. C. Pickering. director of the Harvard astronomical observatory-that human af- fairs go on forever without much If any reference to them. The group of sun spots that has recently attracted so much general attention is therefore, so far as anything is definitely known about it, solar curiosity rather than any visible prophet of approaching evils. Even as mere solar curiosities, however, the spots are interesting enough to warrant gen. eral attention, especially in view of the fact that most of our present knowledge of the sun is a product of the last half century In this knowledge the sun spots their character, the perlodicty of their dpptd1dilCt anu lHtll Itldllpi to tilV ttii LII are all matters whose final solution de- bends upon future investigation. Mean- time 1t has been shown that there is certain degree of regularity in their ap- pearances and disappearances, that there is an apparent connection, whether real or merely coincidental, between the sun spots and our terrestrial magnetic dis turbances, and that there is little or no connection between their appearance on the sun and the weather, commercial panics. wars or other disturbances that affect the everyday existence of average mortals
 Appearance of Sun Spots.
 In appearance the typical sun spots, as seen through a powerful telescope, sug gest great chasms in the sun, so large indeed that our own earth could be drop ped into one of them easily and might even get out of sight before touching the bottom. Such hole, of course, would be a mere incident on the suns surface, as readily appears when one remembers that if the sun were considered as a hollow sphere our own planet, together with the moon, could be placed inside of it without disturbing the distance that ordinarily separates them But, as matter of fact, the question is mooted among astrono- mers whether the sun spot is an enorm- ous chasm, inconcevably deep, or an enormous saucer filled with gaseous mat ter that absorbs the light rays and so presents to the astronomer the black and empty appearance of a tremendous chasm. And the theory has also been advanced that the spots instead of being epressions are actually elevations of a portion of the suns surface.
 The cause of the spots has been like wise the subject of many theories no one of which has received sufficient belief to be considered even approximately final. Calico, for example thought the sun spots to be clouds floating above the surface of the sun and cutting off portion of its light; Lalande imagined them to be the peaks of solar mountains projecting through the fiery envelope that surrounds the body of the sun; Sir Will jam Herschel believed them to be holes in this fiery envelope-the atmosphere through which the dark body of the sun Is thus temporarily visible: Sir John Her schel suggested the idea of whrling storms boring great holes in this outer covering They have been looked upon also as clouds produced by solar erup- tions, and as the result of planets ap- preaching closely enough to the sun to affect a portion of its surface. These the ories however are simply theories and the modern astronomer looks 10 the fur ther des elopment of such essentially mod ern methods of study as the camera and spectroscope for some more generally convincing explanation.
 Study of Spots.
 From the modern point of view the study of the sun spots goes back to the time of Calico. Earlier mentions of sim liar phenomena are simply matters of vis- hofn bs of the telescope had brought the heavenly bodies near enough for anything that be- gins to suggest the possibility of ever be- coming intimately acquainted with them. The Chinese, for example, are said to