4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



leagues a second. From well-established principles and from facts made 

 known by recent experimental researches of Edlund and Zollner, it is 

 evident that immense currents of electricity would circulate around each 

 mighty orb, but in different directions. On the most stupendous scale 

 the two suns, or the sun and its great planetary attendant, would thus 

 acquire magnetism, but have opposite polarities ; and, in moving around 

 their common center of gravity, they would exert over a wide domain 

 the peculiar phenomenon which is but feebly manifested by a rotating 

 horseshoe magnet. 



Though the calorific effects of the encounters of great spheres have 

 monopolized the attention of modern scientists, many facts show that 

 mechanical action of the most extreme violence is attended with a larger 

 conversion of energy into electricity and magnetism, and that in the case 

 under consideration these forces must be developed on a more gigantic 

 scale than heat and light. On the fall of a meteorite to the sun after a 

 long course through his atmosphere on November 1, 1859, a disturbance 

 occurred in terrestrial magnetism so quick and remarkable as to excite 

 much attention at several stations of Europe and America. Even this 

 circumstance alone would give grounds for a very high estimate of the 

 magnetic agency called into being, if an amount of matter more than a 

 thousand times that contained in our globe were hurled almost horizon- 

 tally over a solar surface with a velocity of two or three hundred miles 

 a second. 



The consequences of the movements of the two great bodies, with 

 the new properties which they assume in these convulsive stages, may 

 be accurately traced by the aid of scientific principles for which Arago 

 furnished a basis in 1825. Observing that, in the neighborhood of 

 copper, water, glass, and other substances, a magnetic needle had its 

 oscillations curtailed in the same manner as if it encountered the resist- 

 ance of a medium, he endeavored to unravel the mystery by additional 

 experiments, and was finally led to the discovery of magnetism of rota- 

 tion. The researches which he commenced were continued successfully 

 by Babbage, by Sir John Herschel, and others ; it was found that a 

 horseshoe magnet rotating around its axis would impart its circular 

 motion to disks of copper with which it had no connection ; but the 

 inquiry was carried still further by Faraday, who proved all the effects 

 on the electrical development attending the movement. Reasoning 

 from what is known of such kinds of action, it is evident that the rapid 

 revolution of the two great magnetized orbs could not sensibly affect 

 the motion of preexisting planets nor even of asteroids in the solar sys- 

 tem ; but it would alter much the courses and velocities of meteorites 

 and meteoric dust ; and it would be likely to make its influence felt in 

 whirling the nebulous matter supplied by comets or separated from the 

 equator of the greater central sun. At that theatre of violence, the 

 matter would be dissociated perhaps into the sub-elements of Lockyer, 

 and it would be quickly spread around, along the equatorial plane; so 



