RECENT COSMOGONIES 227 



pounds will be produced by virtue of the increased pressure. 

 This pressure must increase at an immense rate towards 

 the interior of the sun, by about 3500 atmospheres per kilometre. 

 The gasses which dissociate into atoms at the lower pressures and 

 the higher temperatures of the extreme solar strata above the 

 photosphere clouds enter into chemical combination in the depths 

 of the spots, as we learn from spectroscopic examination. Owing 

 to their high temperatures, these compounds absorb enormous 

 quantities of heat in their building up, and these quantities of 

 heat are to those which are concerned in the chemical processes 

 of the earth in the same ratio as the temperature of the sun is 

 to that at which the chemical reactions are proceeding on the 

 earth. As these gases penetrate farther into the sun, temperature 

 and pressure are still more and more increased, and there will 

 result products more and more abounding in energy and con- 

 centration. We may, therefore, imagine the interior of the sun 

 charged with compounds which, brought to the surface of the 

 sun, would dissociate under an enormous evolution of heat and 

 an enormous increase of volume. These compounds have to be 

 regarded as the most powerful blasting agents, by comparison 

 with which dynamite and gun-cotton would appear like toys. In 

 confirmation of this view, we observe that gases when penetrating 

 into the photosphere clouds are able to eject prominences at a 

 stupendous velocity, attaining several hundred kilometres per 

 second. This velocity surpasses that of the swiftest rifle-bullet 

 about a thousandfold. We may hence ascribe to the explosives 

 which are confined in the interior of the sun energies which must 

 be a million times greater than the energy of our blasting agents. 

 (For the energy increases with the square of the velocity.) And 

 yet these solar blasting agents have already given up a large part 

 of their energy during their passage from the sun's interior. It 

 thus becomes conceivable that the solar energy instead of hold- 

 ing out for 4000 years, as it would if it depended upon the com- 

 bustion of a solar sphere made out of carbon will last for some- 

 thing like four thousand million years. Perhaps we may further 

 extend this period to several billions. 



As his final and main thesis, the learned savant 

 undertakes to explain how life-germs are disseminated 

 through the universe. First, he disposes of the argu- 

 ment in behalf of spontaneous generation by citing its 

 want of ocular proof and absence of physical demon- 

 stration. He then reminds us of Schwarzschild's deduc- 

 tion, that particles approximating .00016 mm. in diameter 

 are the most responsive to radiation pressure, and seeks 

 to extend this category to include plant and animal spores 



