Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/306

302 3. A small proportion of the inner, and a large proportion of the outer, coronal light are solar rays reflected and diffracted by the coronal particles.

Arrhenius has recently shown that Abbot's observation of an apparent temperature of the corona nearly equal to that of his observing room is in harmony with the spectrographic evidence of an inner corona composed of incandescent particles. Arrhenius finds that one minute dust particle to each 11 cubic meters of space in the coronal region observed by Abbot, raised to the temperature of 4620° absolute required by Stefan's law, would give a corona of the observed brightness, and of the observed temperature. The bolometric strip measured the resultant temperature of the few highly-heated particles and the cold background of space upon which the particles are seen in projection.

Arrhenius further estimates that a corona composed of incandescent dust particles need not have a total mass greater than 25,000,000 tons, to radiate the quantity of light yielded by the brightest corona observed. This is approximately that of a cube of granite only 200 meters on each side; a remarkably small mass for a volume whose linear dimensions are millions of kilometers.

This résumé of solar theory necessarily overlooks many unsettled points of great significance. Most important of all, perhaps, is that of the solar constant: does it vary, and in accordance with what law? Why is there a sun-spot period, and why are the large spots grouped within limited zones? Why does the form of the corona vary in a period equal in length to the spot period? Why does the angular speed of rotation increase from the poles to the equator? What is the origin of the faculæ and the flocculi? Why do the Fraunhofer lines show little evidence of high atmospheric pressure? Why are the radiations from calcium, one of the heavy elements, so prominent in the higher chromospheric strata and in the prominences? A great number of such questions are pressing for solution. Under the stimulus of the brilliant researches of our chairman, the reinventor and the leading developer of the spectroheliograph, cooperative plans for solar work on a large scale are now being organized. We should be vitally interested in promoting these plans; for the study of the sun, as the principal foundation of astrophysical research, has been unduly neglected.

The celestial bodies develop under conditions over which we have no control. We must observe the facts as they are, at long range, and interpret them in accordance with those principles of physical science which govern what seem to be closely related terrestrial phenomena. A successful study of the development of matter in distant space, under the influence of heat, pressure, electricity and other forces of nature