Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/70

60 with existing instruments, to obtain results of extreme value from observations kept up witb persistence and scrupulous care for several years at the top of some rainless mountain, if such can be found; but the undertaking would be a difficult and serious affair, quite beyond any private means.

Related to this subject is the problem of the connection between the activity of the solar surface and magnetic disturbances on the earth—a connection unquestionable as matter of fact, but at present unexplained as matter of theory. It may have something to do with the remarkable prominence of iron in the list of solar materials; or the explanation may, perhaps, be found in the mechanism by means of which the radiations of light and heat traverse interplanetary space, presenting itself ultimately as a corollary of the perfected electromagnetic theory of light.

The chromosphere and prominences present several problems of interest. One of the most fruitful of them relates to the spectroscopic phenomena at the base of the chromosphere, and especially to the strange differences in the behavior of different spectrum-lines, which, according to terrestrial observations, are due to the same material. Of two lines (of iron, for instance) side by side in the spectrum, one will glow and blaze, while the other will sulk in imperturbable darkness; one will be distorted and shattered, presumably by the swift motion of the iron vapor to which it is due, while the other stands stiff and straight. Evidently there is some deep-lying cause for such differences; and as yet no satisfactory explanation appears to me to have been reached, though much ingenious speculation has been expended upon it. Mr. Lockyer's bold and fertile hypothesis, already alluded to, that at solar and stellar temperatures our elements are decomposed into others more elemental yet, seems to have failed of demonstration thus far, and rather to have lost ground of late; and yet one is almost tempted to say, "It ought to be true," and to add that there is more than a possibility that its essential truth will be established some time in the future.

Probably all that can be safely said at present is, that the spectrum of a metallic vapor (iron, for instance, as before) depends not only upon the chemical element concerned, but also upon its physical conditions; so that, at different levels in the solar atmosphere, the spectrum of the iron will differ greatly as regards the relative conspicuousness of different lines; and so it will happen that, whenever any mass of iron vapor is suffering disturbance, those lines only which particularly characterize the spectrum of iron in that special state will be distorted or reversed, while all their sisters will remain serene.

The problem of the solar corona is at present receiving much attention. The most recent investigations respecting it—those of Dr. Huggins and Professor Hastings—tend in directions which appear to be diametrically opposite. Dr. Huggins considers that be has