Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/123

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as to the proportion at different levels of positive and negative electrons, and of the perturbations due to currents in the solar atmosphere, must delay the most effective application of these methods, though they promise much future knowledge of the magnetic field at high levels in the solar atmosphere.

Of the field at low levels, however, they may tell us little or nothing, for the distribution of the electrons may easily be such as to give rise to a field caused by the rotation of the solar atmosphere, which may oppose in sign the field due to the rotation of the body of the sun. To detect this latter field, the magnetic field of the sun as distinguished from that of the sun's atmosphere, we must resort to the method employed in the case of sun-spots—the study of the Zeeman effect. If