The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-01-25
NEW THEORY or SUN AND
 STARS
Worked Out by Mathematical Methods by Professor See, U. $. N.

Worked Out by Mathematical Methods
 by Professor See, U. $. N.
 The Astronomisehe Nuchrichten for November contains new theory of the sun and stars by Professor T. J. J. See, United States navy, the astronomer formerly in charge of the large tele-
 scope of the Naval Observatory in Washington. Tbe new theory is
 worked out by mathematical methods, and Is revolutionary in more ways than one.
 Dr. See starts out by showing that the matter of the sun is reduced to sin
 gle atoms by the enormous heat to which 1t is subjected, and that no pos
 sible chemical combinations can take
 place In the sun. Even hydrogen, oxy-
 gen and nitrogen, which make up our air in the form Of molecules composed
 of united atoms, are split apart by the suns heat. This Is called by Dr. See
 the monotomic theory.
 It was first touched upon by the
 American astronomer, Lane, in 1S69 Professor See has revived and extend
 ed Lanes neglected work. and given the whole theory of the sun mathe- matical form. Some of the principal points in Dr. Sees theory are as fol- lows
 i. The sun is made up of single at oms, and the central density is exact ly six times the mean density. This Is described as a new law discovered by Dr. See and verified with great labor. It applies to all the fixed stars as well as the sun, and Is thus a general law of nature Tables are given, and also
 curves showing what the density is at every point of the suns radius While the density at the centre ex-
 ceeds that of iron and turns out to be identical with that of German silver, near the surface 1t becomes excessively small. One-tenth of the way down to
 the centre the density is only one hun dred and fifty-three times that of air and at the surface the density lies be1 tween one-tenth and one-hundredth of that of air
 2. It Is shown that the temperature
 rises with enormous rapidity as the suns mass is penetrated, becoming at the centre fifty million degrees centi-
 grade. The heat just below the photo sphere is shown to be nearly half a million degrees-so intense that the light and heat are driven through the earth's atmosphere.
 Tn 4h1r Gao A suns surface radiation without the use of convection currents, assumed by previous writers, They have uniform ly held that hot currents come from the depths of the sun, while cold cur
 rents sink after their heat is radiated away. Dr. See does away with all this complex theory.
 3. The pressure is shown to increase downward in the sun at tremendous
 rate, becoming more than fourteen bil- lion atmospheres at the centre. Imag- Inc column of mercury erected from the earth one-sixth of the way to the
 sun and pressing throughout as col
 umn of quicksilver does here at the earth's surface and you have an idea
 of the pressure at the suns centre. In
 addition to this pressure 1t has a tenn
 perature of fifty million degrees centi-
 grade.
 The mean velocities of molecules are
 shown to be three hundred and forty five miles a second. Even near the sur face the pressure is great, and there fore circulation of surface matter nak- ing up the prominence must be quite shallow.
 At one-tenth of the way to the cen Ire the pressure is two and one-half times that at the centre of the earsth, and the matter therefore much more rigid than the armor plates of a battle ship, though only one hundred and flf- | ty-three times as dense as air. f. Professor See calculates the total amount of heat stored up in the sun, and shows that when star or sun is made up of single atoms only one-half of the heat developed in condensation ! is radfated away, while the rest is stored up. Hence it follows that one half of all the heat produced by the sun SlHCe SteIAlly ls Stlll slOfeu up TUT future radiation. This leads to the conclusion that the future duration of
 the sun will be at least three times that of the past.
 Some scientists have supposed that
 the suns light and heat are beginning
 to fail, but pr. See shows by calcula-
 ton that the suns activity is still ris- ing and that we have as yet by no
 means reached the zenith of glory in
 the life of the solar system. This con-
 clusion is verified and applied to the
 stars of the Milky Way, and he shows
 that their brilliant light is due to this Accumulation of heat within their fam ing globes.
 When we look upon the stars at