THE NEW ASTRONOMY. 



Ill I". SUN. 



I'.v l'R(M'i:SS()K A. W. r>I( KI.KTON. 



TlIK Al'l'ROAlHIXC. Sol.AK ICCI.I I'SIIS. 



I DID not intend to amplify my tentative views of 

 the problems relating to the Sun and to Comets, as 

 given in " The Hirth of Worlds and Systems," but 

 the phenomenal number of naked-eye comets in 

 1911 and the approaching eclipses of the Sun have 

 caused a good deal of attention to be directed to the 

 Sun and to Comets. At the meetings of the British 

 Astronomical .\ssociation a number of papers have 

 been read and questions asked regarding these two 

 subjects. Many enquiries have also been addressed 

 to me personally, and hence I think, as the physics of 

 the third body seem to throw much light upon most of 

 these quest ions, that an amplification of thcsuggest ions 

 made in mv books 

 regarding the physics 

 of the Sun and 

 Comets, will be of 

 value. I shall not at 

 present deal w ith tlii' 

 genesis of the Solar 

 System, as I still 

 believe that the 

 Moons and Planets 

 were captured, as I 

 described in mv 

 papers in 1879 and 

 INSO. and I have 

 made no very ex- 

 haustive stud\- of this 

 part of the New 

 Astronomy during 

 the last few years. 



In thus presenting 

 a working h\pothesis 



relating to the ph\sics of the Sun and Comets, I wish 

 it to be understood that these suggestions do not 

 stand in line with the first four articles on the New 

 .\stronomy. Most of the matter of these articles 

 consists of deductions absolutely demonstrated to be 

 true bv the indisputable nature of the obser\atioiial 

 evidence that has accumulated. 



Thi-: Sun and its Surfack. 



The Sun, the ruling orb of the system of planets 

 of which our Earth is a member, is a revolving bla;;- 

 ing ball of fire, of such size and intensity, that, were 

 its heat kept up by combustion, it would require to 

 be stoked w ith six- hundred times the coalfields of the 

 entire Earth everv minute of its existence. 



The great globe on w hich we live takes us some 

 two months to travel around' it. It has a mass of 

 some six thousand millions of millions of millions of 



tons. The \ast solar furnace is more than a million 

 times the size of the Earth. So intense is the 

 internal heat and pressure of the Sun that the inner 

 gases of which it is composed must be moving with 

 such speed and under conditions that the molecular 

 velocity must gi\e its interior a dynamical rigidity of 

 some thousand times that of the strongest nickel 

 steel. Its surface temperature is something like 

 10,000" C; so hot that the most intractable sub- 

 stance known on liarth would be fused and 

 volatilized. The clouds of carbon that at one time 

 were supposed to form its photosphere could no more 

 exist in the solid form at the solar surface than 

 could ice remain solid 

 in a kitchen fire. 



SrKFACH Storms 

 AND Sin Spots. 



Tile flames of this 

 stupendous bonfire 

 often leap upwards 

 from its surface some 

 scores of thousands 

 of miles. On special 

 occasions some of 

 these \-ast tongues of 

 fire have been seen 

 towering above the 

 limb of the Sun to a 

 height of some hun- 

 dreds of thousands of 

 miles. \'ast cyclones 

 and other storms 

 break into the general 

 glow of its brilliant surface and produce dark 

 spots; many of these sweeping whirlwinds of 

 flame are so stupendous, that the great globe, 

 our dwelling place, might drop into one of them 

 with no more comparati\e effect than a chestnut 

 in a cottage fire. 



The Sun's Rotation. 



In addition to these great flames and cyclonic 

 storms, the Sun has manv other characteristics that 

 have been found hard to understand. 



The Sun rotates in about thirty days, yet his 

 equator completes a revolution in something like two 

 davs less than the parts some forty-five degrees of 

 latitude away. 



Thus a sliding action must be occurring among 

 its gaseous constituents, adding greatly to the tumult 

 of its surface. 



r/rtA»0', Cf 



