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 XLV. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON DR. C. W. SIEMENS'S NEW THEORY OF THE SUN. 

 BY M. FAYE. 



IT would appear that this theory has greatly struck our physicists ; 

 for it had scarcely appeared in London when it was translated 

 and published in France in various forms, and especially in the last 

 number of the Annates de Chimie et de Physique. I suppose that 

 the principal object of this haste was the announcement of fresh 

 experiments which have been instituted by the author upon the 

 chemical action of light. It is well known that, under the action 

 of light and, with the intervention of the chlorophyll of plants, 

 aqueous vapour and carbonic acid are decomposed at ordinary tem- 

 peratures, and brought back to the combustible form, carbon and 

 hydrogen variously associated. Dr. Siemens has tried whether the 

 action of the light of the Sun alone would not produce this decompo- 

 sition if we submit to it, without any other intermediary, aqueous va- 

 pour and carbonic-acid gas excessively rarefied, brought for example 

 to the vacuum of Tshftr -^ s experiments, which, in my opinion, 

 only require a counter-test which it would be easy to institute, 

 have given perfectly affirmative results. Thus, the burnt gases 

 having been brought to such a rarefaction tbat they no longer 

 permitted the passage of the induction-spark, a few hours' exposure 

 to the light of the Sun sufficed to enable the mixture to allow this 

 spark to pass with the well-known coloration that it acquires in 

 hydrocarburetted media *. 



Regarding these beautiful experiments as decisive, Dr. Siemens 

 has been led to inquire whether this phenomenon does not per- 

 form in the universe a part still more considerable than in vege- 

 table life. Supposing Space to be filled with analogous gases, 

 already burnt, the light of the Sun would revivify the combustibles 

 hydrogen and carbon, which would then be quite ready to furnish 

 the food of a fresh combustion. 



By drawing them to himself and burning them afresh, the Sun 

 would recuperate a good portion of the enormous heat which one 

 is grieved to see him radiating in pure loss into celestial space. 



Dr. Siemens has thus been led to put forward the following 

 hypothesis : — Space is filled with burnt gases, aqueous vapour 

 and carbonic acid, mixed with inert gases, nitrogen &c, pretty 

 nearly the same as those of our atmosphere, at a pressure of 

 ^-jJjj-j,. These gases are partially converted into combustibles 

 under the action of the solar fight ; then, by a mechanism like that 

 of the fan of a blower, the Sun draws them to himself, burns them, 

 and sends them back again into space. This immense source of 

 heat would be continually resuscitated ; the only part of its radia- 

 tion lost would be that which is not absorbed by the cosmical 

 medium of a density of jiho' 



* A vacuum produced in a bell-glass into which a drop of oil of 

 turpentine has previously been introduced, for example. 



