Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/464

460 solar corona are so distributed, especially at the time of minimum sun spot activity, as to indicate strongly that they were arranged around the sun as a magnetized sphere. It is not necessary here to review the many details which pointed to that conclusion. The great objection to that theory at the time in the minds of scientists consisted in the fact that the sun was too hot to be a magnetized sphere. It was pointed out by me that the earth is certainly a magnetized sphere, and that its interior has a very high temperature. Since those days the discovery of the ionization of matter, whereby dynamic forces of one kind or another disintegrate the atoms, of which molecules are composed, into their primal constituents, which are pure charges of electricity, and the demonstration that the free ions, positive or negative, as the case may be, wander about from place to place and produce magnetic field, have made this theory of the sun much more intelligible. The additional discovery of the Zeeman effect of magnetic field in the sun spots greatly strengthens my theory, and in fact it is not easy to see how solar phenomena can now be discussed on any other general basis.

The solar output shows itself in an irruption of prominences, in a very extended corona, and in an invisible radiation stretching out to almost unlimited distances in space. The polar magnetic field of the sun, of which the corona is an evidence, will expand to great distances from the center, and its strength may perhaps be detected as far as to the distance of the earth. Electromagnetic radiation stretches out over the solar sphere radially in every direction, a small pencil of the same falls upon the earth in its different positions along the orbit from day to day, and sets the circulation up in the earth's atmosphere which has been described. This solar radiation falling upon the earth's atmosphere is in part absorbed by it, so that the molecules and atoms yield up their ions, which by redistribution produce the observed phenomena of the earth's electric field, and also certain well-known variations in the strength of the earth's magnetic field. The entire subject is full of difficulties, but at the same time it possesses a fascination to the student such as pertains to very few branches of modern science. This same radiation of the sun falling upon the earth produces the temperatures which vary from place to place, from season to season, and from year to year, in a very complex series of changes which, taken as a whole, constitute what is called the earth's climate. There are many indications that this solar radiation, that is to say, the electromagnetic energy which the sun sends forth into space, is not exactly constant. The sun seems to be a variable star, the variation in its heat and light is the natural consequence of the incessant changes of temperature and pressure, in the circulation, the electricity and magnetism, which are going on within the solar mass. We have already been able to show from our studies of the barometric pressure, temperature and vapor pressure in