The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1910-04-13

VI Ahu4A0 CIIy Inc conversion OF
mineral substances, water and air
into edible products could hitherto
be effected only by the plant organ
ism in its microscopic retortas. This
is another undiscovered secret.
But whenever dire need arose the
saving discovery was made. At
| present we are still able to have the
| plants cook our food in sunlight
and this fortunate condition is likely
to continue for some time. Still our
shrewdest investigators have long
ago begun attempts to make or
ganic substance" and ultimately
bread, from stones or at least from
air and water with a little bit of
earth added. Unfortunately every
one of the organic substances so far
| produced in the chemical laboratory
has no nutritive value whatever. We
have been able to reproduce arti-
! ficially the perfumes of flowers, for
instance the sweet fragrance of the
violet, which certainly is one of ma
lures masterpieces, and also many
dyestuffs which heretofore could be
derived from plants only. So far
however, there is among these arti-
fetal products none of any use to
our stomachs. But all will be
achieved some time, and then we
shall not need the sun at all, and it
may go out if it wishes.
But will this ever occur? Can
the sun ever lose it's immense power?
A calculation has been made show
ing that the sun is like a furnace
capable Of heating an engine that
could every second lift a load of
80, 900, 100000 tons (of 1000 kilo-
grammes each) a distance of one
kilometer. Let the engineers figure
what they could do with this, where
as at present they allow all this en-
ergy to go to waste. With an in
finitesimal portion of this energy the
sun sets in motion the machinery of
our atmosphere which raises the wa
ter from the seas to the clouds and
feeds our waterfalls With small
tappings of this water, such as those
diverted at Niagara Falls, we light
entire cities. This furnace, as could
be determined with reasonable GER
tainty, has a surface temperature Of
about 5000 degrees c. IN it's in
terror the sun must harbOr tempera-
lures of perhaps hundreds of thou
sands of degrees. And from this
sun there might be formed more
than 100000 bodies of the earth's
size, all of this tremendous heat.
1t will be apparent that this repre-
sents a huge store which is likely
to last many millions of years. A
rough calculation showed that the
sun has been shining upon this earth
for about 100000 years, and
that it ought to continue doing so
for another 1O0,000,000 years, but
it must be admitted that these fig
ures rest on insecure foundations.
But even if they are ten times too
large we can await developments
with some enquanimity.
Even nowadays we see signs in
dicating that some time sunshine
and sunbeams will cease. On the
suns beautiful face traces of old
age will appear now and then as
dark spots which break out in great
err or smaller numbers and extent,
often suddenly, at other times re-
curing weeks and months for their
development and disappearance.
About every eleven years these ugly
peck marks break out with particu-
lar strength on the brilliant skin
of the mighty ruler of our world,
every eleven years his body must
rid itself of this bad disease, where
upon for a few years the sun may
beam again with almost spotless
purity and again spread happiness
f
eous plenty.
These sun spots are violent Whirl-
winds in the upper atmosphere re-
gions of the central body of our plan
etary system, as is evidenced by the
very shape of the colud formations.
frequently spiral and stOrm-swept,
which surround the inner apparently
quite black nucleus of the spot Re
Gently the American astronomer,
Hale, who has made a special study
of the sun, has particularly inVest-
gated the spectral lines into which
the light of the sun spots may be
separated, and has shown that IN
these cyclones there occur tremen-
dous electric discharges, the effects
of which we may often observe upon
the earth in the magnificent polar
lights which are frequently seen
shooting up when an unusually
large sun spot faces the earth. The
sun clouds which are whirled about
in these frightful thunder storms are
frequently so large that the earth's
entire surface could be contained in
them many hundreds of times, and
so hot that iron would be not only
liquifed, but transformed into va
pors. AS a matter of fact, it is part
" iron air which blows across the
surface of the sun and from which
a rain of luminous drops falls in the
spots, to be again gasified in the
lower, hotter strata of the sun and
to whirl up from them.
1t has been observed that when
ever the sun is covered with partic-
ularly numerous spots the whole at
mosphere of the earth grows cooler
one or even two degrees (centr1-
grade). 1t has further been found
that a temperature reduction of only
five degrees would suffice to bring
1n4 I'D