CHAPTER XXVIII. 



APPLICATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS TO THE GENERAL 

 PHENOMENA OF THE SUN. 



I TRUST my readers are not yet tired of tests. My excuse for 

 my insistence upon them must be that I hold it to be the duty 

 of a student of science who suggests a new view, to spend as 

 much of the rest of his life as is necessary to determine whether 

 it is true or false. 



We have seen in the last few chapters how the new view fits 

 the facts, so far as I have been able to follow them, in 

 the spectroscopic examination of spots and prominences and 

 of the sun's atmosphere during an eclipse, as well as in 

 laboratory work. 



I propose now to go further afield and see whether the 

 hypothesis breaks down or gives us light when we apply it 

 to the explanation of ordinary solar phenomena, when, in short, 

 we pass from solar chemistry to solar physics. 



We start with the view that there is a true atmosphere 

 arranged in layers, the chemical components of which depend 

 upon temperature only. We get association as particles move 

 up from A to L, dissociation as particles move down from L to 

 A. Each shell will be hotter than the superincumbent one, and 

 hence if for a moment we neglect the effect of pressure, the sun 

 as bounded by the photosphere will be a mass of gas at a far 

 higher temperature than anything outside it. 



