Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-06-18
ECLIPSE OFF THE SUN
By Frederic j. Haskin


earth. They have three standpolnts
from which this may be calculated
and all give the same answer. .Iney
are then in position to tell how big
the sun is, and they place its diameter
at 100000 miles. If it takes forty days
to go around the earth, at the same
speed it would take twelve years to
travel around the sun. If the earth
were to swell to the size of the sun
and man should grow tall in propor-
ton, he would be about 625 feet high,
or nearly hundred feet higher than
the Washington monument. If 15O-
pound man could fly to the sun his
weight would be about two tons, ow-
ing to the vast increase in the force
of gravity, due in turn to the far
greater size of the sun as compared
with the earth.
1t is estimated that old Sol radiates
enough heat comfortably to provide for
two thousand million planets like our
own. Each square foot of his sur
face gives off enough heat to drive an
ocean liner and two acres of the SUMS
surface would furnish power enough
to drive all the machinery in the world
now driven by steam. It's heat con-
centrated on a column of ice two and
fourth miles square and reaching
from the earth to the sun would suf-
flee to melt the whole column in a
the water from the melted column
would be vaporized. What becomes of
all this heat and light, ask the as
tronomers With only one billionth
part of it used by all the planets, do
the other 999, 999 500 parts go on and
on into empty space forever at the
rate of 10000 miles a second? Is the
sun so prodigal with its heat that it
uses only the bi1lionth part to a good
purpose?
And when will this terrific expendi-
ture of energy cease? Scientists know
that if it were a solid lump of the
best anthracite coal, burning under a
forced draft, it would not give off as
much heat as at present, and that
the last vestige of that lump would
be burned away in 5000 years.
The accepted theory of the source of
the SUMS heat is that Of contraction.
1t has been shown that a contraction
of twenty-five feet year in the suns
volume would account for all the heat
it radiates. At that rate it would take
10000 years for the difference to be-
come appreciable to the astronomer,
and 100000 years for it seriously to
affect conditions on the earth.
Simon Newcomb, whose name is
known wherever men study the
heavens, says that the cromosphere, the
ring of light around the sun at
total eclipse, if an ocean of fire, is as
deep as the Atlantic is broad, and
many times hotter than the fiercest
furnace. If there are hurricanes in
the sun they blow as fast in a second
as our greatest storms in an hour. In
thirty seconds one of them would blow
from the Canadian border to the gulf
of Mexico, not destroying houses and
life alone, but converting the whole
landscape into a seething mass Of
glowing Vapor. We think of a We
suvius eruption with its streams of
lava, yet the sun shoots columns Of
gas $4,000 miles high that would de-
stroy in the twinkling of an eye every
Vestige, of life on a world like ours
What would happen to man il the
earth should forget the law of gravita-
ton that keeps it racing around the
sun? Astronomers declare that at once
we would begin to travel straightaway
into space, getting further and further
away at the rate of a thousand miles.
and more an hour, and in a years time
the last vestige of life on the earth
would have passed forever.
Perhaps the greatest work now being
done in learning more about the mys-
teries of the sun is at Mount Wilson.
Cal. under the auspices of the Carnegie
institution. Cooperating with its own
observers is Prof. Abbott of the astro-
pilJ clNdl ODSti NdlOIY Ol lle DnlI1SOn-
ian institution. One of the instruments
used in the studies is the radiometer,
and another the bolometer. The radio
meter is so delicate that the heat of
candle a half mile away will have a
strong effect upon it; and when the
image of a mans face it a distance of
half mile is thrown upon it by the re-
fleeing mirrors it shows a change of
twenty-five points, where even a half
point cOuld be detected
A teacher of astronomy asked an in
attentive pupil what the corona was.
The boy replied that he did know, but
had forgotten. TOO bad" answered
the teacher with never a smile, that
only one man in the world ever knew
what the corona was and he has for
gotten It," But it is the hope of many
astrophysicists that the patient work
which they propose to do In the next
quarter century will reveal what the
pupil thought he had forgotten along
with many other things about the great
orb upon which all mundane life de-
ponds. In learning about it as the CEN
ter of the solar system they will also
learn about millions of other stars.
some of which are as much brighter
than the sun as MONDAY is brighter
than twilight and as much hotter as
the torrid zone is than the north pole.
Copyright. 1909. by Frederic J. Haskin.)