THE 
LONDON, EDINBURG-H, and DUBLIN 
PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 
AND 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
[FIFTH SEKIES.] 
SEPTEMBER 1883. 
XXV. On the Admissibility of the Assumption of a Solar 
Electric Potential, and its Importance for the Explanation 
of Terrestrial Phenomena. By Weener Siemens*. 
MY brother, Sir William Siemens, in his memoir " On the 
Conservation of Solar Energy," has set up the hypo- 
thesis that the sun possesses a high electric potential, which 
possibly produces the phenomenon of the zodiacal light. He 
accounts for the rise and maintenance of this electric potential 
by friction of the matter which, according to his theory, hav- 
ing been dissociated by the light- and heat-rays emitted from 
the sun, flows in from cosmical space to its polar regions. 
This would, after condensation had set in, again undergo com- 
bustion and then flow towards the sun's equator. In doing 
this it would be electrified by friction with the rotating body 
of the sun, and then be afresh diffused in cosmical space, in 
its electrified state, by the centrifugal force of the rotation. 
If this much-controverted theory be admitted as correct, it 
follows that the phenomenon in question is really similar to 
the electrization (described by mef ) of the apex of the pyra- 
mid of Cheops by the whirling dust-clouds of the desert. We 
could then assume that the body of the sun, supposed con- 
ductive and insulated by the sea of flame enveloping it, the 
* Translated from a separate impression, communicated by Sir Charles 
Siemens, from the Sitzungsberichte der Mniglieh preussisclien Akademie der 
Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1883, XXVI. 
t Pogg. Ann. cix. p. 855, 1860. 
Phil Mag. S. 5. Vol. 16. No. 99. Sept. 1883. 
