Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-11-07
Continued from page 8

one of these is the cause of the rest, or whether
they all are consequences of some action yet to
be recognized. Without doubt, the aurora is
an electrical phenomenon, or it would not be
so intimately connected with magnetic and
electric perturbatIOnS, and vet 1T IS a strange
fact that when it shows itself there is album
dant manifestation of atmospheric electricity
near the earth's surface.
The difficulty of accounting for visible cleo
tricity high in the air has been variously met
by savants. Blot held that the luminosity
was real clouds of metallic matter lighted by
electricity and arranging themselves like mag
nets in the air parallel to the dipping needle
He derived his supposed clouds from dust
elected from volcanoes known to be in action
near the magnetic poles; for the south has
its aurora like the north, only 1T is not so
often observed. No one has supported this
idea. De la Rive supposed the light to be the
luminous effect of the interchange of positive
and negative currents between the colder and
warmer regions of the atmosphere.
The Rev. George Fisher, a polar observer,
considers that particles condensed from humid
vapors on the margin of our polar icecaps play
an important part in the development of visible
aurora; that electricity is produced by their
Coagulation; that the particles aforesaid are
illuminated by the transmission of the fluid
through them; and that the StreamerS are col
umns of such frightened particles ascending
from lower to higher and electrically opposed
strata of the atmosphere. Evidently ice grains
have something to do with the matter; for it
has repeatedly been noticed that frozen spic
ule descend from the sky during auroral dis
plays. French craftsman, while sketching,
felt them falling on his hands.
The theory propounded by Professor Loomis
the historian of the 1859 aurora, bears resem-
blance to De Ia Rive's. The abundant vapors
ascending from equatorial seas are held to carry
up into the higher regions of the atmosphere
quantities of positive electricity, while the
earth'S electricity remains negative. The
former is conveyed by upper currents of air
toward the pole, and there earth and higher
air form, to to speak, the two plates of a con-
triCity takes place soon as a certain tension
is reached. This interchange is effected through
spaces of least resistance, and, the streaming
electricity being luminous, the familiar auroral
beams are manifested. The currents returning
through the earth are held to be the cause of
the magnetic perth, cations and the disturb
ances in Geographic wires.
Where Arson Nay Appear
PROFESSOR BERTIIE.-OT, in describing
his experiments with the newly discovered
elemt mt in the atmosphere, argon, says, The
Northt IN Lights, which have SO long puzzled
mariners and scientists and frightened super
stitouS people, actually have been produced
on small scale in the darkened laboratory"
In the blackness of night he obtained splendid
displays of color similar in every respect to the
Aurora Borealrs. and the playing of the lam
bent flame coincident with a strange
change in the chemical formation of the new
gas. The argon appeared to be consumed by
the little Aurora Borealis it was throwing off
before the astonished and delighted eyes of the
man of science.
Thus is the aurora affiliated to another phe-
nomenon. 1t does not, however nor do any of
its predecessors, account for the accumulation
or the sudden generation of the vast quantities
of electricity necessary for an auroral display. |
But we may know this when we have dscov-
cred the ultimate source of the storehouse of
the thunderstorm's activity.
The aurora after all may be the slow and
silent lightning of the poles.
PUMPKIN HEADS
Tall oaks, we're told, from little acorns grow. |