Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/495

Rh to proceed would consist in carefully observing the spectra in different layers of the sun. Supposing we observe a change at one point, we may investigate at what temperature that change takes place, and we may then ascribe the same temperature to that particular place at the solar surface, if no other cause has interfered which may have affected our result. This last conditional limitation leads us to the discussion of the important but difficult question, whether we can determine any such interfering cause, which, not being temperature, yet produces the same change in a spectrum which we have hitherto only ascribed to changes of temperature.

I must here remark that a change in type is not the only spectroscopic change in the spectrum which is observed to take place on varying the temperature. Line-spectra especially are subject to curious variations in the relative intensities of their lines. These variations follow no general rule, and must be investigated separately for each element. The cause of this variation is a subject on which there exists a great difference of opinion; but, whatever this cause may be, if the changes always take place at one fixed temperature, we can turn them into account in measuring that temperature. However strong our wish that such a spectroscopic measurement of temperature may ultimately be obtained, a remarkable complication of facts has delayed the realization of this hope for at least a considerable period of time.

We have to enter partly into a theoretical question, and I must necessarily allude to some of the facts recognized by all who believe in the molecular theory of gases. Each molecule, which, as we have seen, sends out rays of light and heat on account of its internal motion, is surrounded by other molecules. These are, indeed, very closely packed, and continually moving about with enormous velocities. Generally they move in straight lines, but it must necessarily happen that often they come very near, and then affect and deflect each other. Perhaps they come into actual contact, perhaps they repel each other so strongly when near, that contact never takes place. The time elapsing between two such collisions is very small. If you can imagine one second of time to be magnified to the length of a hundred years, it would only take about a second, on the average, from the time a molecule has encountered one other molecule until it encounters the second. During the greatest part of this very short time, it moves in a straight line, for the forces between molecules are so small that they do not affect each other unless their distance is exceedingly small. It is, therefore, only during a very small fraction of time that one molecule is under the influence of another, and it is one of the greatest problems of molecular physics to find out what happens during that short element of time. I should like to explain to you how I believe the spectroscope may contribute its share to the settlement of that question. In his first great paper on the molecular theory of gases, the late Professor Clerk Maxwell assumed that two molecules may