The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-03-07
Have You Seen the Sun?

Rave on Ocen the DUN:
If you were to start toward the sun travelling
on an express train going sixty miles an hour ant
you continued your journey night and day with
out rest, it would take you one hundred ane
eighty years to reach it. The vast distance
which separates is from this source of all on,
light and warmth is altogether beyond the
stretch of imagination to conceive. Sensa
tons travel pretty rapidly but if a man had ar
arm 95,OOOOOO miles long and he burned his
finger the surface of the sun, the feeling
would not reach his brain for 167 years.
II man were to lay an apple on street ir
London and another to place an apple-seeo
street in Philadelphia, the distance between
these two would represent the distance between
the and the earth; the difference in size
would represent the difference between the mag
nitude of the sun and Of this planet.
One million, two hundred and eighty thous-
and such earths as this would have to be thrown
together into a heap to compose mass the size
OF the sun. Its diameter is more than one hun
dred times the diameter of the earth. If all the
planets and moons in our solar system melt
ed down into one body, it would then be only
1-750 Of the size of the sun. The earth turns
around once on its exis in twenty-four hours but
the sun is so big he gets around only in
twenty-five days.
What is this vast mass of matter doing? So
far as we can see, nothing but throwing out linn
itless quantities of light and energy. Conserva-
tive astronomers believe the temperature Of the
sun is about 100000 degrees Centegrade on it's
surface. And so much heat is thrown off by it
that the energy coming from single square foot
Of its surface is equivalent to about 7 900 horse
power.
How &c If hoo+ i
One would suppose the sun would burn out like a
lump OF coal and grow cold. Some astronomers
believe that the contraction of its substance
IS sufficient to generate great part of it's heat
Others believe that enough Of meteoric particles
which are flying in every direction through
space falls on it's surface to generate vast
amount of heat through friction Others believe
there must be great amount of radioactive
matter in its makeup. Radium is familiar ex-
ample of this kind of substance and it is easv to
understand how if there is much contained in
The sun, it would keep burning and shining for
long time before being exhausted
In comparison with the sun, the earth is p
very tiny mite of thing and it fills one with awe
to look out across the great stretches of space
and see it shining in the sky. 1t makes one real
lze that life itself on such planet as this is very
a
man has fully realized that the light which falls
on his kitchen step has come from such a thing
as the sun and has travelled 95,OOO,OOO miles to
get there, he never again can feel that living on
the earth in the full view of such a body as the
sun tan be a tame or uninteresting affair.
In u few weeks, when the earth turns ;+s
northern end toward the great luminary, we in
these chimes will receive that share of it's loht
and heat which those on the southern end of tho
planet have been receiving. Then it's energy will
De taken up by plants and animals and trans
formed into chlorophyll and tissue and we will
eat those plants and animals and transform the
energy we get from them into human thonob+
ana human Dreams 1t seems a far cr5 from III
\aS1 ana flaming furnace of the sun to the roses
III oaoyS cheek and the eloquence in a nopt,s
oran but the scientists tell us that the a o ma,
directly be traced to the former