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Page 8
We now see how our dark immensity of attractive atoms can become
luminous. A force of compression results in vibrations within,
communicated to the ether, discerned by the eye. Illustrations are
numerous. If we suddenly push a piston into a cylinder of brass,
the force produces heat enough to set fire to an inflammable substance
within. Strike a half-inch cube of iron a moderate blow and it becomes
warm; a sufficient blow, and its vibrations become quick enough to
be seen--it is red-hot. Attach a thermometer to an extended [Page
19] arm of a whirling wheel; drive it against the air five hundred
feet per second, the mercury rises 16�. The earth goes 98,000 feet
per second, or one thousand miles a minute. If it come to an
aerolite or mass of metallic rock, or even a cloudlet of gas,
standing still in space, its contact with our air evolves 600,000�
of heat. And when the meteor comes toward the world twenty-six miles
a second, the heat would become proportionally greater if the meteor
could abide it, and not be consumed in fervent heat. It vanishes
almost as soon as seen. If there were meteoric masses enough lying
in our path, our sky would blaze with myriads of flashes of light.
Enough have been seen to enable a person to read by them at night.
If a sufficient number were present, we should miss their individual
flashes as they blend their separate fires in one sea of
insufferable glory. The sun is 1,300,000 times as large as our
planet; its attraction proportionally greater; the aerolites more
numerous; and hence an infinite hail of stones, small masses and
little worlds, makes ceaseless trails of light, whose individuality
is lost in one dazzling sea of glory.
On the 1st day of September, 1859, two astronomers, independently
of each other, saw a sudden brightening on the surface of the sun.
Probably two large meteoric masses were travelling side by side
at two or three hundred miles per second, and striking the sun's
atmosphere, suddenly blazed into light bright enough to be seen
on the intolerable light of the photosphere as a background. The
earth responded to this new cause of brilliance and heat in the
sun. Vivid auroras appeared, not only at the north and south poles,
but even where such spectacles are seldom seen. The electro-magnetic
[Page 20] disturbances were more distinctly marked. "In many places
the telegraphic wires struck work. In Washington and Philadelphia
the electric signalmen received severe electric shocks; at a station
in Norway the telegraphic apparatus was set fire to; and at Boston a
flame of fire followed the pen of Bain's electric telegraph." There
is the best of reason for believing that a continuous succession of
such bodies might have gone far toward rendering the earth
uncomfortable as a place of residence.
Of course, the same result of heat and light would follow from
compression, if a body had the power of contraction in itself. We
endowed every particle of our gas, myriads of miles in extent, with an
attraction for every other particle. It immediately compressed itself
into a light-giving body, which flamed out through the interstellar
spaces, flushing all the celestial regions with exuberant light.
But heat exerts a repellent force among particles, and soon an
equilibrium is reached, for there comes a time when the contracting
body can contract no farther. But heat and light radiate away into
cold space, then contraction goes on evolving more light, and so
the suns flame on through the millions of years unquenched. It is
estimated that the contraction of our sun, from filling immensity
of space to its present size, could not afford heat enough to last
more than 18,000,000 years, and that its contraction from its present
density (that of a swamp) to such rock as that of which our earth
is composed, could supply heat enough for 17,000,000 years longer.
But the far-seeing mind of man knows a time must come when the
present force of attraction [Page 21] shall have produced all the
heat it can, and a new force of attraction must be added, or the sun
itself will become cold as a cinder, dead as a burned-out char.
Since light and heat are the product of such enormous cosmic forces,
they must partake of their nature, and be force. So they are. The
sun has long arms, and they are full of unconquerable strength
ninety-two millions, or any other number of millions, of miles
away. All this light and heat comes through space that is 200�
below zero, through utter darkness, and appears only on the earth.
So the gas is darkness in the underground pipes, but light at the
burner. So the electric power is unfelt by the cable in the bosom
of the deep, but is expressive of thought and feeling at the end.
Having found the cause of light, we will commence a study of its
qualities and powers.
Light is the astronomer's necessity. When the sublime word was
uttered, "Let there be light!" the study of astronomy was made
possible. Man can gather but little of it with his eye; so he takes
a lens twenty-six inches in diameter, and bends all the light that
passes through it to a focus, then magnifies the image and takes
it into his eye. Or he takes a mirror, six feet in diameter, so
hollowed in the middle as to reflect all the rays falling upon it
to one point, and makes this larger eye fill his own with light.
By this larger light-gathering he discerns things for which the
light falling on his pupil one-fifth of an inch in diameter would
not be sufficient. We never have seen any sun or stars; we have
only seen the light that left them fifty minutes or years ago, more
or less. Light is the a�rial sprite that carries our measuring-rods
across the infinite [Page 22] spaces; light spreads out the history
of that far-off beginning; brings us the measure of stars a thousand
times brighter than our sun; takes up into itself evidences of the
very constitutional elements of the far-off suns, and spreads them
at our feet. It is of such capacity that the Divine nature, looking
for an expression of its own omnipotence, omniscience, and power of
revelation, was content to say, "God is Light." We shall need all
our delicacy of analysis and measurement when we seek to determine
the activities of matter so fine and near to spirit as light.
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