CHAPTER IX.INTERPRETATION OF COMETIC PHENOMENA.Electroscope, showing repulsion of pith-ball from charged conductor.Bundle of straws unelectrified, and afterwards suddenly forced asunder by electricity.Now, curiously enough, we have in constant use in our laboratories a little instrument called the electroscope, in which we have manifested very clearly a repulsive force exceeding in energy the earth’s attracting power, and very greatly exceeding it. It is described in “Electricity in the Service of Man” as follows: “If we rub a large glass rod with a silk pad, we observe that it will attract light bodies, then, after contact, repel them. During the process we may notice a peculiar noise, and if the experiment be carried out in the dark we may further notice sparks passing between the rod and the rubber, and also that the rod becomes luminous.If we suspend a pith-ball by means of a silk thread, on bringing the rubbed rod near the pith-ball it will move towards the rod, touch it, and then be repelled. If the glass rod be again brought near the pith-ball, it will move away from the glass rod, and continue to be repelled until it has been touched by some other body …. In order to ascertain whether electricity is communicated by electrified bodies to non-electrified bodies when brought into contact, let us suspend two pith-balls from the same point of support by threads of uniform silk, and touch the pith-balls with the rubbed glass rod. The balls fly from the rod and also from one another. On bringing near them a third pith-ball or any other light body, we find that, though they repel one another, they are attracted by the light body, showing that they have become electrified by contact with the rubbed glass rod. From this we conclude that an unelectrified body may be electrified by contact with an electrified body, and also that there is repulsion after contact. There ismutual repulsion between two electrified bodies, but there is attraction between a single electrified body and one that is unelectrified.” The mutual repulsion of these pith-balls is the exact measure of the strength of electrification. Hung side by side to the knob of a prime conductor of an electrical machine, the mutual repulsion of the similar electrospheres of these pith-balls drives them apart against the earth’s gravity and holds them extended, if the electrical tension be sufficient, to their widest limit of divergence. It is, in effect, precisely similar tothe action of the solar and cometic electrospheres (see illustration in a previous chapter, page 124), each being similarly electrified and communicating with the other across a space which, as before stated, is freely traversable by electric currents without appreciable resistance. That such electrospheres are flaming with heat does not interfere with such self-repellent action; in fact, it intensifies it. In Professor Tyndall’s “Lessons in Electricity” we read, “Flamesand glowing embers act like points; they alsorapidly discharge electricity. The electricity escaping from a point or flame renders the air self-repulsive. The consequence is that when the hand is placed over a point mounted on the prime conductor of a machine in good action a cold blast is distinctly felt …. Wilson moved bodies by its action, Faraday caused it to depress the surface of a liquid, Hamilton employed the reaction of the electric wind to make pointed wires rotate. The ‘wind’ was also found to promote evaporation.”Let us now apply these principles to the tails of comets. If we conceive the sun and comet to be analogous to our pith-balls, one enormously larger than the other, however, and hung by vaporous conducting cords from the combined generating planetary electrospheres, both sun and cometic nucleus surrounded each by a vaporous envelope, and suspended so that they will hang from parallel cords, say a dozen million miles apart, and with no currents of electricity as yet in operation, we will find that the sun and comet will be simply attractedtowards each other by the force of gravity, so that their suspending cords will converge. If the planetary electrical machines now commence their rotations, and currents of electricity begin to pass in quantity and intensity like those which pass between the earth and the sun, both the solar and cometic pith-balls will become similarly electrified, and their gaseous atmospheres, instead of drawing towards each other, will become luminous and self-repulsive. Theatmospherewhich surrounds the cometic pith-ball, by reason of its great tenuity, will be driven backward with extreme velocity, while the solar pith-ball electrosphere will be so little affected that its repulsion will be imperceptible. All the gaseous matter, however, of the smaller pith-ball will be forced off in a direction opposite that of the larger one, and this repulsive energy will even carry the pith-balls apart, causing the suspending cords to widely diverge from each other, while the force of gravity of the earth tends to bring them nearer together. If the gravity of the larger pith-ball, however, was equal, relatively, to that of the sun, the result would be that the solid pith-balls would be mutually attracted by gravitation and only the electrified atmospheres, would be mutually repelled. This experiment would present phenomena similar to those we are now considering. (See illustration, page 211.)In describing Newton’s comet, with a tail ninety million miles long projected backward both from the sun and the comet, when it disappeared in thelight of the sun, and exhibiting a similar tail, also ninety million miles long, when, less than four days afterwards, it reappeared from behind the sun, but with the tail now directed forward from the comet, but in both cases extended radially outward from the sun, it is obvious that this whole tail must have made a sweeping change of direction of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees upon the nucleus as its center. Professor Proctor says, “As Sir John Herschel remarks, we cannot look on the tail of a comet as something whirled round like a stick as the comet circles around its perihelion sweep. The tail with which the comet reappeared must have been an entirely new formation.” It is true that a comet’s tail cannot be conceived of as being whirled round like a stick, but we can very readily conceive of it as something like a flame composed of incandescent gases, and it may very easily beblownround a stick; and this is precisely what must happen in the case of a comet. Construct, for experiment, a little apparatus consisting of a blow-pipe adapted to deliver a current of air between two horizontal metal disks, say an eighth of an inch apart, one perforated at the center to admit the nozzle of the blow-pipe. By directing a constant current of air through the latter, it will be deflected so as to blow radially outward in all directions and in the same plane. Now take a stick with a flame on the end of it, or a lighted candle, and with it approach this center of repellent energy in the plane of the space between the disks and along an ellipserepresenting the orbit of a comet. As the flame approaches the improvised solar center it will be driven backward from the wick of the candle almost along the line of its approach, and as it passes around the center it will be constantly blown outward in a radial direction until, when it recedes after perihelion, the flame will be seen pointed almost directly ahead. At all times the direction of the flame will lie along the radial lines prolonged outward from the center through the wick of the candle, and it will not be a new flame generated at every change of its direction, but the same flame constantly forced outward by the repulsive force of the central atmosphere in this case or the solar electrosphere in the case of the sun. This experiment is an accurate and conclusive exhibit ofthe phenomena of solar repulsion in its action upon the tail of a comet. It is analogous in principle to the repulsion of the pith-balls and the electric wind and (in application) to the phenomena presented by comets in their movements to, around, and from the sun. This repulsion is not operative in effect against the wick of the candle,—that is to say, it is not the repulsion of the nucleus which determines the direction of the tail, but the repulsion by direct outblow of the sun, so to speak, upon the incandescent gases of the tail itself. This fact clearly demonstrates that the repulsion of like electrospheres is the cause of the phenomenon, and, when once understood, the process is quite as simple as that of the original formation of the tail itself, which no one disputes.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.There is to be further considered the theoretical resistance of space to the projection and deflection of such enormous volumes of attenuated matter as appear in comets’ tails. While it may not be absolutely necessary to offer an explanation of this apparent difficulty, in view of the fact that such projection and deflection do actually occur, still, the well-known laws of the diffusion of gases, in accordance with which any gaseous matter will traverse any other gaseous matter with the same velocity as, and with no more resistance than, in a vacuum, will show that this difficulty has been much overrated, while for the twin difficulty, how to account for the persistence of luminosity at such vast distances from its source, we may quote from Professor Proctor, “Cometic Mysteries,” who, inturn, quotes as follows: “Comets travel in what must be regarded as to all intents and purposes a vacuum. From Dr. Crookes’ experiments on very high vacua we may infer that there is very little loss of heat, except by radiation.” By “intents and purposes” we understand, of course, as a cause of resistance, and certainly there is no reason to believe that the attenuated vapors of space are sufficient in density to cause any rapid diffusion of heat by convection, as contrasted with that of radiation.We have seen that comets of short period sometimes disappear, and that their disappearance is frequently followed by the appearance of trains of meteors. In other words, they have apparently lost their cometic properties and become permanent adjuncts to our solar system. A curious confirmation of this fact is to be found in the character of the occluded gases which are contained in such meteorites as sometimes fall upon the earth’s surface. Of this Professor Proctor says, “We have reason to believe that the nucleus of a comet consists of an aggregation of stones similar to meteorites.” Speaking of the condition in which meteorites reach the earth, he says, “They are known to contain as much as six times their own volume of gases (taken at atmospheric pressure). In one of these meteorites recently examined by Dr. Flight, the following percentages of various gases were noted: Of carbonic oxide, 31.88; of carbonic acid gas, 0.12; of hydrogen, 45.79; of olefiant gas, 4.55; and of nitrogen, 17.66.” The presence of olefiantgas at once suggests the hydrocarbons of the cometic nucleus. The presence of this gas cannot be accounted for by the passage of the meteorite through our atmosphere, nor can that of hydrogen, and these are two characteristic gases, together with the vapor of carbon, constantly found to exist in comets.As before explained, the advent of a comet into our solar system is that of a stranger, with electric polarity the opposite of that of the planetary electrospheres and identical with that of the sun. Under the combined influence of the solar gravity and perturbation by the gravity of the planets these foreign bodies tend to shorten their periods, and finally fall into the ordinary array of the bodies which compose our own solar system. But when this occurs they will, in turn, become contributors to, instead of antagonists of, the energy of the sun; in other words, they must then conform electrically to the condition of the family into which they have married,—that is to say, the planets,—and a reversal of their electrical polarity will take place. This reversal of polarity is no novelty in the operation of electrical apparatus. In “Electricity in the Service of Man” we read as follows of the Voss induction machine: “This machine is exceedingly powerful in favorable weather, but has an important defectin a tendency to self-reversal, which is apt to occur at a stoppage. This defect can be produced in a Voss machine, when desired,by holding a metal pointto the positive brushK. The two derived inductive circuits are beautifully manifestedwhen this machine is worked in the dark. A luminous stream is seen pouring towards the collecting combLon whichever side of the machine the comb is positive.” It will thus be seen that simple contact of a neutral (or negatively opposite) body will reverse the electrical polarity of this machine, or even the interruption of its motion will do so at times. Possibly a similar reversal may be produced in a comet by the contact in whole or in part of its nucleus with a planetary electrosphere, since the action of gravity is entirely independent of that of the attraction or repulsion of the electrospheres of both planetary and cometic bodies. Such reversal of polarity in a comet would at once extinguish its luminosity, and the generation of oxygen would at once replace the prior generation of hydrogen, and herein we may find explained the presence of carbonic oxide in large volume and carbonic acid in small volume in the meteorite above referred to, and of which gases Professor Proctor says, “It is quite certain these gases were not taken up by the meteorolite during its flight through the air.” These aggregations of discrete meteoric bodies, loosely adherent by mutual gravity alone, would be gradually torn apart by planetary interference and dragged into streams of small bodies, thenceforth traversing space in elliptical orbits around the sun, just as do the planets and planetoids. Cyanogen, also, the deadly gas so frequently found to exist in enormous quantities in the nuclei of comets, would at once disappear, by double conversion into carbonic acid,or oxide, and ammonia, or nitrogen, so that this danger, as the result of a comet’s possible approach to the earth’s atmosphere, may be dismissed from apprehension.It will be seen that all the enormous difficulties in the phenomena of comets find an explanation in the operation of the same universal laws which we have endeavored to apply to the other sidereal bodies. In conclusion, we may cite the following from Dr. Huggins: “Broadly, the different applications of principles of electricity which have been suggested group themselves about the common idea that great electrical disturbances are set up by the sun’s action in connection with the vaporization of some of the matter of the nucleus, and that the tail is probably matter carried away, possibly in connection with electric discharges, under an electrical influence of repulsion exerted by the sun. This view necessitates the supposition that the sun is strongly electrified, either negatively or positively, and, further, that in the processes taking place in the comet, either of vaporization or of some other kind, the matter thrown out by the nucleus has become strongly electrified in the same way as the sun,—that is, negatively if the sun’s electricity is negative, or positively if the sun’s is positive. The enormous disturbances which the spectroscope shows to be always at work in the sun must be accompanied by electrical changes of equal magnitude, but we know nothing as to how far these are all, or the great majority of them, in one direction, so as to cause the sun to maintainpermanently a high electrical state, whether positive or negative.” The above speculations will have thus become demonstrated facts (though not in the mode suggested by the above writer) as soon as we clearly understand that, instead of the sun’s “enormous disturbances” producing “electrical changes of equal magnitude,” it is the electrical changes of equal magnitude which themselves cause the sun’s disturbances, and that the sun’s negative electrical polarity is permanently fixed by the opposite and positive polarity of the planetary electrospheres, and that all these various phenomena are but the normal expression of a single universal law, and are all due to the constant interaction of planetary, solar, and cometic electrospheres, in accordance with the well-established principles of electrical science. If, however, we consider, as is generally believed to be the case, the sun itself to be the sole prime source of its visible energy, nothing but difficulty and vague speculation can be looked for on every hand; but by relegating the solar orb to its proper place, and taking as the starting-point the true source of all energy,—to wit, the hidden forces embodied in the vapors or gases of interstellar space,—the whole process and mode of action will logically follow, and obscurity and difficulty together disappear. This principle, properly understood, is a master-key which will unlock every problem and interpret every enigma which the realms of interstellar space can present.
CHAPTER IX.INTERPRETATION OF COMETIC PHENOMENA.Electroscope, showing repulsion of pith-ball from charged conductor.Bundle of straws unelectrified, and afterwards suddenly forced asunder by electricity.Now, curiously enough, we have in constant use in our laboratories a little instrument called the electroscope, in which we have manifested very clearly a repulsive force exceeding in energy the earth’s attracting power, and very greatly exceeding it. It is described in “Electricity in the Service of Man” as follows: “If we rub a large glass rod with a silk pad, we observe that it will attract light bodies, then, after contact, repel them. During the process we may notice a peculiar noise, and if the experiment be carried out in the dark we may further notice sparks passing between the rod and the rubber, and also that the rod becomes luminous.If we suspend a pith-ball by means of a silk thread, on bringing the rubbed rod near the pith-ball it will move towards the rod, touch it, and then be repelled. If the glass rod be again brought near the pith-ball, it will move away from the glass rod, and continue to be repelled until it has been touched by some other body …. In order to ascertain whether electricity is communicated by electrified bodies to non-electrified bodies when brought into contact, let us suspend two pith-balls from the same point of support by threads of uniform silk, and touch the pith-balls with the rubbed glass rod. The balls fly from the rod and also from one another. On bringing near them a third pith-ball or any other light body, we find that, though they repel one another, they are attracted by the light body, showing that they have become electrified by contact with the rubbed glass rod. From this we conclude that an unelectrified body may be electrified by contact with an electrified body, and also that there is repulsion after contact. There ismutual repulsion between two electrified bodies, but there is attraction between a single electrified body and one that is unelectrified.” The mutual repulsion of these pith-balls is the exact measure of the strength of electrification. Hung side by side to the knob of a prime conductor of an electrical machine, the mutual repulsion of the similar electrospheres of these pith-balls drives them apart against the earth’s gravity and holds them extended, if the electrical tension be sufficient, to their widest limit of divergence. It is, in effect, precisely similar tothe action of the solar and cometic electrospheres (see illustration in a previous chapter, page 124), each being similarly electrified and communicating with the other across a space which, as before stated, is freely traversable by electric currents without appreciable resistance. That such electrospheres are flaming with heat does not interfere with such self-repellent action; in fact, it intensifies it. In Professor Tyndall’s “Lessons in Electricity” we read, “Flamesand glowing embers act like points; they alsorapidly discharge electricity. The electricity escaping from a point or flame renders the air self-repulsive. The consequence is that when the hand is placed over a point mounted on the prime conductor of a machine in good action a cold blast is distinctly felt …. Wilson moved bodies by its action, Faraday caused it to depress the surface of a liquid, Hamilton employed the reaction of the electric wind to make pointed wires rotate. The ‘wind’ was also found to promote evaporation.”Let us now apply these principles to the tails of comets. If we conceive the sun and comet to be analogous to our pith-balls, one enormously larger than the other, however, and hung by vaporous conducting cords from the combined generating planetary electrospheres, both sun and cometic nucleus surrounded each by a vaporous envelope, and suspended so that they will hang from parallel cords, say a dozen million miles apart, and with no currents of electricity as yet in operation, we will find that the sun and comet will be simply attractedtowards each other by the force of gravity, so that their suspending cords will converge. If the planetary electrical machines now commence their rotations, and currents of electricity begin to pass in quantity and intensity like those which pass between the earth and the sun, both the solar and cometic pith-balls will become similarly electrified, and their gaseous atmospheres, instead of drawing towards each other, will become luminous and self-repulsive. Theatmospherewhich surrounds the cometic pith-ball, by reason of its great tenuity, will be driven backward with extreme velocity, while the solar pith-ball electrosphere will be so little affected that its repulsion will be imperceptible. All the gaseous matter, however, of the smaller pith-ball will be forced off in a direction opposite that of the larger one, and this repulsive energy will even carry the pith-balls apart, causing the suspending cords to widely diverge from each other, while the force of gravity of the earth tends to bring them nearer together. If the gravity of the larger pith-ball, however, was equal, relatively, to that of the sun, the result would be that the solid pith-balls would be mutually attracted by gravitation and only the electrified atmospheres, would be mutually repelled. This experiment would present phenomena similar to those we are now considering. (See illustration, page 211.)In describing Newton’s comet, with a tail ninety million miles long projected backward both from the sun and the comet, when it disappeared in thelight of the sun, and exhibiting a similar tail, also ninety million miles long, when, less than four days afterwards, it reappeared from behind the sun, but with the tail now directed forward from the comet, but in both cases extended radially outward from the sun, it is obvious that this whole tail must have made a sweeping change of direction of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees upon the nucleus as its center. Professor Proctor says, “As Sir John Herschel remarks, we cannot look on the tail of a comet as something whirled round like a stick as the comet circles around its perihelion sweep. The tail with which the comet reappeared must have been an entirely new formation.” It is true that a comet’s tail cannot be conceived of as being whirled round like a stick, but we can very readily conceive of it as something like a flame composed of incandescent gases, and it may very easily beblownround a stick; and this is precisely what must happen in the case of a comet. Construct, for experiment, a little apparatus consisting of a blow-pipe adapted to deliver a current of air between two horizontal metal disks, say an eighth of an inch apart, one perforated at the center to admit the nozzle of the blow-pipe. By directing a constant current of air through the latter, it will be deflected so as to blow radially outward in all directions and in the same plane. Now take a stick with a flame on the end of it, or a lighted candle, and with it approach this center of repellent energy in the plane of the space between the disks and along an ellipserepresenting the orbit of a comet. As the flame approaches the improvised solar center it will be driven backward from the wick of the candle almost along the line of its approach, and as it passes around the center it will be constantly blown outward in a radial direction until, when it recedes after perihelion, the flame will be seen pointed almost directly ahead. At all times the direction of the flame will lie along the radial lines prolonged outward from the center through the wick of the candle, and it will not be a new flame generated at every change of its direction, but the same flame constantly forced outward by the repulsive force of the central atmosphere in this case or the solar electrosphere in the case of the sun. This experiment is an accurate and conclusive exhibit ofthe phenomena of solar repulsion in its action upon the tail of a comet. It is analogous in principle to the repulsion of the pith-balls and the electric wind and (in application) to the phenomena presented by comets in their movements to, around, and from the sun. This repulsion is not operative in effect against the wick of the candle,—that is to say, it is not the repulsion of the nucleus which determines the direction of the tail, but the repulsion by direct outblow of the sun, so to speak, upon the incandescent gases of the tail itself. This fact clearly demonstrates that the repulsion of like electrospheres is the cause of the phenomenon, and, when once understood, the process is quite as simple as that of the original formation of the tail itself, which no one disputes.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.There is to be further considered the theoretical resistance of space to the projection and deflection of such enormous volumes of attenuated matter as appear in comets’ tails. While it may not be absolutely necessary to offer an explanation of this apparent difficulty, in view of the fact that such projection and deflection do actually occur, still, the well-known laws of the diffusion of gases, in accordance with which any gaseous matter will traverse any other gaseous matter with the same velocity as, and with no more resistance than, in a vacuum, will show that this difficulty has been much overrated, while for the twin difficulty, how to account for the persistence of luminosity at such vast distances from its source, we may quote from Professor Proctor, “Cometic Mysteries,” who, inturn, quotes as follows: “Comets travel in what must be regarded as to all intents and purposes a vacuum. From Dr. Crookes’ experiments on very high vacua we may infer that there is very little loss of heat, except by radiation.” By “intents and purposes” we understand, of course, as a cause of resistance, and certainly there is no reason to believe that the attenuated vapors of space are sufficient in density to cause any rapid diffusion of heat by convection, as contrasted with that of radiation.We have seen that comets of short period sometimes disappear, and that their disappearance is frequently followed by the appearance of trains of meteors. In other words, they have apparently lost their cometic properties and become permanent adjuncts to our solar system. A curious confirmation of this fact is to be found in the character of the occluded gases which are contained in such meteorites as sometimes fall upon the earth’s surface. Of this Professor Proctor says, “We have reason to believe that the nucleus of a comet consists of an aggregation of stones similar to meteorites.” Speaking of the condition in which meteorites reach the earth, he says, “They are known to contain as much as six times their own volume of gases (taken at atmospheric pressure). In one of these meteorites recently examined by Dr. Flight, the following percentages of various gases were noted: Of carbonic oxide, 31.88; of carbonic acid gas, 0.12; of hydrogen, 45.79; of olefiant gas, 4.55; and of nitrogen, 17.66.” The presence of olefiantgas at once suggests the hydrocarbons of the cometic nucleus. The presence of this gas cannot be accounted for by the passage of the meteorite through our atmosphere, nor can that of hydrogen, and these are two characteristic gases, together with the vapor of carbon, constantly found to exist in comets.As before explained, the advent of a comet into our solar system is that of a stranger, with electric polarity the opposite of that of the planetary electrospheres and identical with that of the sun. Under the combined influence of the solar gravity and perturbation by the gravity of the planets these foreign bodies tend to shorten their periods, and finally fall into the ordinary array of the bodies which compose our own solar system. But when this occurs they will, in turn, become contributors to, instead of antagonists of, the energy of the sun; in other words, they must then conform electrically to the condition of the family into which they have married,—that is to say, the planets,—and a reversal of their electrical polarity will take place. This reversal of polarity is no novelty in the operation of electrical apparatus. In “Electricity in the Service of Man” we read as follows of the Voss induction machine: “This machine is exceedingly powerful in favorable weather, but has an important defectin a tendency to self-reversal, which is apt to occur at a stoppage. This defect can be produced in a Voss machine, when desired,by holding a metal pointto the positive brushK. The two derived inductive circuits are beautifully manifestedwhen this machine is worked in the dark. A luminous stream is seen pouring towards the collecting combLon whichever side of the machine the comb is positive.” It will thus be seen that simple contact of a neutral (or negatively opposite) body will reverse the electrical polarity of this machine, or even the interruption of its motion will do so at times. Possibly a similar reversal may be produced in a comet by the contact in whole or in part of its nucleus with a planetary electrosphere, since the action of gravity is entirely independent of that of the attraction or repulsion of the electrospheres of both planetary and cometic bodies. Such reversal of polarity in a comet would at once extinguish its luminosity, and the generation of oxygen would at once replace the prior generation of hydrogen, and herein we may find explained the presence of carbonic oxide in large volume and carbonic acid in small volume in the meteorite above referred to, and of which gases Professor Proctor says, “It is quite certain these gases were not taken up by the meteorolite during its flight through the air.” These aggregations of discrete meteoric bodies, loosely adherent by mutual gravity alone, would be gradually torn apart by planetary interference and dragged into streams of small bodies, thenceforth traversing space in elliptical orbits around the sun, just as do the planets and planetoids. Cyanogen, also, the deadly gas so frequently found to exist in enormous quantities in the nuclei of comets, would at once disappear, by double conversion into carbonic acid,or oxide, and ammonia, or nitrogen, so that this danger, as the result of a comet’s possible approach to the earth’s atmosphere, may be dismissed from apprehension.It will be seen that all the enormous difficulties in the phenomena of comets find an explanation in the operation of the same universal laws which we have endeavored to apply to the other sidereal bodies. In conclusion, we may cite the following from Dr. Huggins: “Broadly, the different applications of principles of electricity which have been suggested group themselves about the common idea that great electrical disturbances are set up by the sun’s action in connection with the vaporization of some of the matter of the nucleus, and that the tail is probably matter carried away, possibly in connection with electric discharges, under an electrical influence of repulsion exerted by the sun. This view necessitates the supposition that the sun is strongly electrified, either negatively or positively, and, further, that in the processes taking place in the comet, either of vaporization or of some other kind, the matter thrown out by the nucleus has become strongly electrified in the same way as the sun,—that is, negatively if the sun’s electricity is negative, or positively if the sun’s is positive. The enormous disturbances which the spectroscope shows to be always at work in the sun must be accompanied by electrical changes of equal magnitude, but we know nothing as to how far these are all, or the great majority of them, in one direction, so as to cause the sun to maintainpermanently a high electrical state, whether positive or negative.” The above speculations will have thus become demonstrated facts (though not in the mode suggested by the above writer) as soon as we clearly understand that, instead of the sun’s “enormous disturbances” producing “electrical changes of equal magnitude,” it is the electrical changes of equal magnitude which themselves cause the sun’s disturbances, and that the sun’s negative electrical polarity is permanently fixed by the opposite and positive polarity of the planetary electrospheres, and that all these various phenomena are but the normal expression of a single universal law, and are all due to the constant interaction of planetary, solar, and cometic electrospheres, in accordance with the well-established principles of electrical science. If, however, we consider, as is generally believed to be the case, the sun itself to be the sole prime source of its visible energy, nothing but difficulty and vague speculation can be looked for on every hand; but by relegating the solar orb to its proper place, and taking as the starting-point the true source of all energy,—to wit, the hidden forces embodied in the vapors or gases of interstellar space,—the whole process and mode of action will logically follow, and obscurity and difficulty together disappear. This principle, properly understood, is a master-key which will unlock every problem and interpret every enigma which the realms of interstellar space can present.
CHAPTER IX.INTERPRETATION OF COMETIC PHENOMENA.
Electroscope, showing repulsion of pith-ball from charged conductor.Bundle of straws unelectrified, and afterwards suddenly forced asunder by electricity.Now, curiously enough, we have in constant use in our laboratories a little instrument called the electroscope, in which we have manifested very clearly a repulsive force exceeding in energy the earth’s attracting power, and very greatly exceeding it. It is described in “Electricity in the Service of Man” as follows: “If we rub a large glass rod with a silk pad, we observe that it will attract light bodies, then, after contact, repel them. During the process we may notice a peculiar noise, and if the experiment be carried out in the dark we may further notice sparks passing between the rod and the rubber, and also that the rod becomes luminous.If we suspend a pith-ball by means of a silk thread, on bringing the rubbed rod near the pith-ball it will move towards the rod, touch it, and then be repelled. If the glass rod be again brought near the pith-ball, it will move away from the glass rod, and continue to be repelled until it has been touched by some other body …. In order to ascertain whether electricity is communicated by electrified bodies to non-electrified bodies when brought into contact, let us suspend two pith-balls from the same point of support by threads of uniform silk, and touch the pith-balls with the rubbed glass rod. The balls fly from the rod and also from one another. On bringing near them a third pith-ball or any other light body, we find that, though they repel one another, they are attracted by the light body, showing that they have become electrified by contact with the rubbed glass rod. From this we conclude that an unelectrified body may be electrified by contact with an electrified body, and also that there is repulsion after contact. There ismutual repulsion between two electrified bodies, but there is attraction between a single electrified body and one that is unelectrified.” The mutual repulsion of these pith-balls is the exact measure of the strength of electrification. Hung side by side to the knob of a prime conductor of an electrical machine, the mutual repulsion of the similar electrospheres of these pith-balls drives them apart against the earth’s gravity and holds them extended, if the electrical tension be sufficient, to their widest limit of divergence. It is, in effect, precisely similar tothe action of the solar and cometic electrospheres (see illustration in a previous chapter, page 124), each being similarly electrified and communicating with the other across a space which, as before stated, is freely traversable by electric currents without appreciable resistance. That such electrospheres are flaming with heat does not interfere with such self-repellent action; in fact, it intensifies it. In Professor Tyndall’s “Lessons in Electricity” we read, “Flamesand glowing embers act like points; they alsorapidly discharge electricity. The electricity escaping from a point or flame renders the air self-repulsive. The consequence is that when the hand is placed over a point mounted on the prime conductor of a machine in good action a cold blast is distinctly felt …. Wilson moved bodies by its action, Faraday caused it to depress the surface of a liquid, Hamilton employed the reaction of the electric wind to make pointed wires rotate. The ‘wind’ was also found to promote evaporation.”Let us now apply these principles to the tails of comets. If we conceive the sun and comet to be analogous to our pith-balls, one enormously larger than the other, however, and hung by vaporous conducting cords from the combined generating planetary electrospheres, both sun and cometic nucleus surrounded each by a vaporous envelope, and suspended so that they will hang from parallel cords, say a dozen million miles apart, and with no currents of electricity as yet in operation, we will find that the sun and comet will be simply attractedtowards each other by the force of gravity, so that their suspending cords will converge. If the planetary electrical machines now commence their rotations, and currents of electricity begin to pass in quantity and intensity like those which pass between the earth and the sun, both the solar and cometic pith-balls will become similarly electrified, and their gaseous atmospheres, instead of drawing towards each other, will become luminous and self-repulsive. Theatmospherewhich surrounds the cometic pith-ball, by reason of its great tenuity, will be driven backward with extreme velocity, while the solar pith-ball electrosphere will be so little affected that its repulsion will be imperceptible. All the gaseous matter, however, of the smaller pith-ball will be forced off in a direction opposite that of the larger one, and this repulsive energy will even carry the pith-balls apart, causing the suspending cords to widely diverge from each other, while the force of gravity of the earth tends to bring them nearer together. If the gravity of the larger pith-ball, however, was equal, relatively, to that of the sun, the result would be that the solid pith-balls would be mutually attracted by gravitation and only the electrified atmospheres, would be mutually repelled. This experiment would present phenomena similar to those we are now considering. (See illustration, page 211.)In describing Newton’s comet, with a tail ninety million miles long projected backward both from the sun and the comet, when it disappeared in thelight of the sun, and exhibiting a similar tail, also ninety million miles long, when, less than four days afterwards, it reappeared from behind the sun, but with the tail now directed forward from the comet, but in both cases extended radially outward from the sun, it is obvious that this whole tail must have made a sweeping change of direction of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees upon the nucleus as its center. Professor Proctor says, “As Sir John Herschel remarks, we cannot look on the tail of a comet as something whirled round like a stick as the comet circles around its perihelion sweep. The tail with which the comet reappeared must have been an entirely new formation.” It is true that a comet’s tail cannot be conceived of as being whirled round like a stick, but we can very readily conceive of it as something like a flame composed of incandescent gases, and it may very easily beblownround a stick; and this is precisely what must happen in the case of a comet. Construct, for experiment, a little apparatus consisting of a blow-pipe adapted to deliver a current of air between two horizontal metal disks, say an eighth of an inch apart, one perforated at the center to admit the nozzle of the blow-pipe. By directing a constant current of air through the latter, it will be deflected so as to blow radially outward in all directions and in the same plane. Now take a stick with a flame on the end of it, or a lighted candle, and with it approach this center of repellent energy in the plane of the space between the disks and along an ellipserepresenting the orbit of a comet. As the flame approaches the improvised solar center it will be driven backward from the wick of the candle almost along the line of its approach, and as it passes around the center it will be constantly blown outward in a radial direction until, when it recedes after perihelion, the flame will be seen pointed almost directly ahead. At all times the direction of the flame will lie along the radial lines prolonged outward from the center through the wick of the candle, and it will not be a new flame generated at every change of its direction, but the same flame constantly forced outward by the repulsive force of the central atmosphere in this case or the solar electrosphere in the case of the sun. This experiment is an accurate and conclusive exhibit ofthe phenomena of solar repulsion in its action upon the tail of a comet. It is analogous in principle to the repulsion of the pith-balls and the electric wind and (in application) to the phenomena presented by comets in their movements to, around, and from the sun. This repulsion is not operative in effect against the wick of the candle,—that is to say, it is not the repulsion of the nucleus which determines the direction of the tail, but the repulsion by direct outblow of the sun, so to speak, upon the incandescent gases of the tail itself. This fact clearly demonstrates that the repulsion of like electrospheres is the cause of the phenomenon, and, when once understood, the process is quite as simple as that of the original formation of the tail itself, which no one disputes.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.There is to be further considered the theoretical resistance of space to the projection and deflection of such enormous volumes of attenuated matter as appear in comets’ tails. While it may not be absolutely necessary to offer an explanation of this apparent difficulty, in view of the fact that such projection and deflection do actually occur, still, the well-known laws of the diffusion of gases, in accordance with which any gaseous matter will traverse any other gaseous matter with the same velocity as, and with no more resistance than, in a vacuum, will show that this difficulty has been much overrated, while for the twin difficulty, how to account for the persistence of luminosity at such vast distances from its source, we may quote from Professor Proctor, “Cometic Mysteries,” who, inturn, quotes as follows: “Comets travel in what must be regarded as to all intents and purposes a vacuum. From Dr. Crookes’ experiments on very high vacua we may infer that there is very little loss of heat, except by radiation.” By “intents and purposes” we understand, of course, as a cause of resistance, and certainly there is no reason to believe that the attenuated vapors of space are sufficient in density to cause any rapid diffusion of heat by convection, as contrasted with that of radiation.We have seen that comets of short period sometimes disappear, and that their disappearance is frequently followed by the appearance of trains of meteors. In other words, they have apparently lost their cometic properties and become permanent adjuncts to our solar system. A curious confirmation of this fact is to be found in the character of the occluded gases which are contained in such meteorites as sometimes fall upon the earth’s surface. Of this Professor Proctor says, “We have reason to believe that the nucleus of a comet consists of an aggregation of stones similar to meteorites.” Speaking of the condition in which meteorites reach the earth, he says, “They are known to contain as much as six times their own volume of gases (taken at atmospheric pressure). In one of these meteorites recently examined by Dr. Flight, the following percentages of various gases were noted: Of carbonic oxide, 31.88; of carbonic acid gas, 0.12; of hydrogen, 45.79; of olefiant gas, 4.55; and of nitrogen, 17.66.” The presence of olefiantgas at once suggests the hydrocarbons of the cometic nucleus. The presence of this gas cannot be accounted for by the passage of the meteorite through our atmosphere, nor can that of hydrogen, and these are two characteristic gases, together with the vapor of carbon, constantly found to exist in comets.As before explained, the advent of a comet into our solar system is that of a stranger, with electric polarity the opposite of that of the planetary electrospheres and identical with that of the sun. Under the combined influence of the solar gravity and perturbation by the gravity of the planets these foreign bodies tend to shorten their periods, and finally fall into the ordinary array of the bodies which compose our own solar system. But when this occurs they will, in turn, become contributors to, instead of antagonists of, the energy of the sun; in other words, they must then conform electrically to the condition of the family into which they have married,—that is to say, the planets,—and a reversal of their electrical polarity will take place. This reversal of polarity is no novelty in the operation of electrical apparatus. In “Electricity in the Service of Man” we read as follows of the Voss induction machine: “This machine is exceedingly powerful in favorable weather, but has an important defectin a tendency to self-reversal, which is apt to occur at a stoppage. This defect can be produced in a Voss machine, when desired,by holding a metal pointto the positive brushK. The two derived inductive circuits are beautifully manifestedwhen this machine is worked in the dark. A luminous stream is seen pouring towards the collecting combLon whichever side of the machine the comb is positive.” It will thus be seen that simple contact of a neutral (or negatively opposite) body will reverse the electrical polarity of this machine, or even the interruption of its motion will do so at times. Possibly a similar reversal may be produced in a comet by the contact in whole or in part of its nucleus with a planetary electrosphere, since the action of gravity is entirely independent of that of the attraction or repulsion of the electrospheres of both planetary and cometic bodies. Such reversal of polarity in a comet would at once extinguish its luminosity, and the generation of oxygen would at once replace the prior generation of hydrogen, and herein we may find explained the presence of carbonic oxide in large volume and carbonic acid in small volume in the meteorite above referred to, and of which gases Professor Proctor says, “It is quite certain these gases were not taken up by the meteorolite during its flight through the air.” These aggregations of discrete meteoric bodies, loosely adherent by mutual gravity alone, would be gradually torn apart by planetary interference and dragged into streams of small bodies, thenceforth traversing space in elliptical orbits around the sun, just as do the planets and planetoids. Cyanogen, also, the deadly gas so frequently found to exist in enormous quantities in the nuclei of comets, would at once disappear, by double conversion into carbonic acid,or oxide, and ammonia, or nitrogen, so that this danger, as the result of a comet’s possible approach to the earth’s atmosphere, may be dismissed from apprehension.It will be seen that all the enormous difficulties in the phenomena of comets find an explanation in the operation of the same universal laws which we have endeavored to apply to the other sidereal bodies. In conclusion, we may cite the following from Dr. Huggins: “Broadly, the different applications of principles of electricity which have been suggested group themselves about the common idea that great electrical disturbances are set up by the sun’s action in connection with the vaporization of some of the matter of the nucleus, and that the tail is probably matter carried away, possibly in connection with electric discharges, under an electrical influence of repulsion exerted by the sun. This view necessitates the supposition that the sun is strongly electrified, either negatively or positively, and, further, that in the processes taking place in the comet, either of vaporization or of some other kind, the matter thrown out by the nucleus has become strongly electrified in the same way as the sun,—that is, negatively if the sun’s electricity is negative, or positively if the sun’s is positive. The enormous disturbances which the spectroscope shows to be always at work in the sun must be accompanied by electrical changes of equal magnitude, but we know nothing as to how far these are all, or the great majority of them, in one direction, so as to cause the sun to maintainpermanently a high electrical state, whether positive or negative.” The above speculations will have thus become demonstrated facts (though not in the mode suggested by the above writer) as soon as we clearly understand that, instead of the sun’s “enormous disturbances” producing “electrical changes of equal magnitude,” it is the electrical changes of equal magnitude which themselves cause the sun’s disturbances, and that the sun’s negative electrical polarity is permanently fixed by the opposite and positive polarity of the planetary electrospheres, and that all these various phenomena are but the normal expression of a single universal law, and are all due to the constant interaction of planetary, solar, and cometic electrospheres, in accordance with the well-established principles of electrical science. If, however, we consider, as is generally believed to be the case, the sun itself to be the sole prime source of its visible energy, nothing but difficulty and vague speculation can be looked for on every hand; but by relegating the solar orb to its proper place, and taking as the starting-point the true source of all energy,—to wit, the hidden forces embodied in the vapors or gases of interstellar space,—the whole process and mode of action will logically follow, and obscurity and difficulty together disappear. This principle, properly understood, is a master-key which will unlock every problem and interpret every enigma which the realms of interstellar space can present.
Electroscope, showing repulsion of pith-ball from charged conductor.
Electroscope, showing repulsion of pith-ball from charged conductor.
Bundle of straws unelectrified, and afterwards suddenly forced asunder by electricity.
Bundle of straws unelectrified, and afterwards suddenly forced asunder by electricity.
Now, curiously enough, we have in constant use in our laboratories a little instrument called the electroscope, in which we have manifested very clearly a repulsive force exceeding in energy the earth’s attracting power, and very greatly exceeding it. It is described in “Electricity in the Service of Man” as follows: “If we rub a large glass rod with a silk pad, we observe that it will attract light bodies, then, after contact, repel them. During the process we may notice a peculiar noise, and if the experiment be carried out in the dark we may further notice sparks passing between the rod and the rubber, and also that the rod becomes luminous.If we suspend a pith-ball by means of a silk thread, on bringing the rubbed rod near the pith-ball it will move towards the rod, touch it, and then be repelled. If the glass rod be again brought near the pith-ball, it will move away from the glass rod, and continue to be repelled until it has been touched by some other body …. In order to ascertain whether electricity is communicated by electrified bodies to non-electrified bodies when brought into contact, let us suspend two pith-balls from the same point of support by threads of uniform silk, and touch the pith-balls with the rubbed glass rod. The balls fly from the rod and also from one another. On bringing near them a third pith-ball or any other light body, we find that, though they repel one another, they are attracted by the light body, showing that they have become electrified by contact with the rubbed glass rod. From this we conclude that an unelectrified body may be electrified by contact with an electrified body, and also that there is repulsion after contact. There ismutual repulsion between two electrified bodies, but there is attraction between a single electrified body and one that is unelectrified.” The mutual repulsion of these pith-balls is the exact measure of the strength of electrification. Hung side by side to the knob of a prime conductor of an electrical machine, the mutual repulsion of the similar electrospheres of these pith-balls drives them apart against the earth’s gravity and holds them extended, if the electrical tension be sufficient, to their widest limit of divergence. It is, in effect, precisely similar tothe action of the solar and cometic electrospheres (see illustration in a previous chapter, page 124), each being similarly electrified and communicating with the other across a space which, as before stated, is freely traversable by electric currents without appreciable resistance. That such electrospheres are flaming with heat does not interfere with such self-repellent action; in fact, it intensifies it. In Professor Tyndall’s “Lessons in Electricity” we read, “Flamesand glowing embers act like points; they alsorapidly discharge electricity. The electricity escaping from a point or flame renders the air self-repulsive. The consequence is that when the hand is placed over a point mounted on the prime conductor of a machine in good action a cold blast is distinctly felt …. Wilson moved bodies by its action, Faraday caused it to depress the surface of a liquid, Hamilton employed the reaction of the electric wind to make pointed wires rotate. The ‘wind’ was also found to promote evaporation.”
Let us now apply these principles to the tails of comets. If we conceive the sun and comet to be analogous to our pith-balls, one enormously larger than the other, however, and hung by vaporous conducting cords from the combined generating planetary electrospheres, both sun and cometic nucleus surrounded each by a vaporous envelope, and suspended so that they will hang from parallel cords, say a dozen million miles apart, and with no currents of electricity as yet in operation, we will find that the sun and comet will be simply attractedtowards each other by the force of gravity, so that their suspending cords will converge. If the planetary electrical machines now commence their rotations, and currents of electricity begin to pass in quantity and intensity like those which pass between the earth and the sun, both the solar and cometic pith-balls will become similarly electrified, and their gaseous atmospheres, instead of drawing towards each other, will become luminous and self-repulsive. Theatmospherewhich surrounds the cometic pith-ball, by reason of its great tenuity, will be driven backward with extreme velocity, while the solar pith-ball electrosphere will be so little affected that its repulsion will be imperceptible. All the gaseous matter, however, of the smaller pith-ball will be forced off in a direction opposite that of the larger one, and this repulsive energy will even carry the pith-balls apart, causing the suspending cords to widely diverge from each other, while the force of gravity of the earth tends to bring them nearer together. If the gravity of the larger pith-ball, however, was equal, relatively, to that of the sun, the result would be that the solid pith-balls would be mutually attracted by gravitation and only the electrified atmospheres, would be mutually repelled. This experiment would present phenomena similar to those we are now considering. (See illustration, page 211.)
In describing Newton’s comet, with a tail ninety million miles long projected backward both from the sun and the comet, when it disappeared in thelight of the sun, and exhibiting a similar tail, also ninety million miles long, when, less than four days afterwards, it reappeared from behind the sun, but with the tail now directed forward from the comet, but in both cases extended radially outward from the sun, it is obvious that this whole tail must have made a sweeping change of direction of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees upon the nucleus as its center. Professor Proctor says, “As Sir John Herschel remarks, we cannot look on the tail of a comet as something whirled round like a stick as the comet circles around its perihelion sweep. The tail with which the comet reappeared must have been an entirely new formation.” It is true that a comet’s tail cannot be conceived of as being whirled round like a stick, but we can very readily conceive of it as something like a flame composed of incandescent gases, and it may very easily beblownround a stick; and this is precisely what must happen in the case of a comet. Construct, for experiment, a little apparatus consisting of a blow-pipe adapted to deliver a current of air between two horizontal metal disks, say an eighth of an inch apart, one perforated at the center to admit the nozzle of the blow-pipe. By directing a constant current of air through the latter, it will be deflected so as to blow radially outward in all directions and in the same plane. Now take a stick with a flame on the end of it, or a lighted candle, and with it approach this center of repellent energy in the plane of the space between the disks and along an ellipserepresenting the orbit of a comet. As the flame approaches the improvised solar center it will be driven backward from the wick of the candle almost along the line of its approach, and as it passes around the center it will be constantly blown outward in a radial direction until, when it recedes after perihelion, the flame will be seen pointed almost directly ahead. At all times the direction of the flame will lie along the radial lines prolonged outward from the center through the wick of the candle, and it will not be a new flame generated at every change of its direction, but the same flame constantly forced outward by the repulsive force of the central atmosphere in this case or the solar electrosphere in the case of the sun. This experiment is an accurate and conclusive exhibit ofthe phenomena of solar repulsion in its action upon the tail of a comet. It is analogous in principle to the repulsion of the pith-balls and the electric wind and (in application) to the phenomena presented by comets in their movements to, around, and from the sun. This repulsion is not operative in effect against the wick of the candle,—that is to say, it is not the repulsion of the nucleus which determines the direction of the tail, but the repulsion by direct outblow of the sun, so to speak, upon the incandescent gases of the tail itself. This fact clearly demonstrates that the repulsion of like electrospheres is the cause of the phenomenon, and, when once understood, the process is quite as simple as that of the original formation of the tail itself, which no one disputes.
Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.
Mechanical device illustrating repulsion by the solar electrosphere of a comet’s tail.
There is to be further considered the theoretical resistance of space to the projection and deflection of such enormous volumes of attenuated matter as appear in comets’ tails. While it may not be absolutely necessary to offer an explanation of this apparent difficulty, in view of the fact that such projection and deflection do actually occur, still, the well-known laws of the diffusion of gases, in accordance with which any gaseous matter will traverse any other gaseous matter with the same velocity as, and with no more resistance than, in a vacuum, will show that this difficulty has been much overrated, while for the twin difficulty, how to account for the persistence of luminosity at such vast distances from its source, we may quote from Professor Proctor, “Cometic Mysteries,” who, inturn, quotes as follows: “Comets travel in what must be regarded as to all intents and purposes a vacuum. From Dr. Crookes’ experiments on very high vacua we may infer that there is very little loss of heat, except by radiation.” By “intents and purposes” we understand, of course, as a cause of resistance, and certainly there is no reason to believe that the attenuated vapors of space are sufficient in density to cause any rapid diffusion of heat by convection, as contrasted with that of radiation.
We have seen that comets of short period sometimes disappear, and that their disappearance is frequently followed by the appearance of trains of meteors. In other words, they have apparently lost their cometic properties and become permanent adjuncts to our solar system. A curious confirmation of this fact is to be found in the character of the occluded gases which are contained in such meteorites as sometimes fall upon the earth’s surface. Of this Professor Proctor says, “We have reason to believe that the nucleus of a comet consists of an aggregation of stones similar to meteorites.” Speaking of the condition in which meteorites reach the earth, he says, “They are known to contain as much as six times their own volume of gases (taken at atmospheric pressure). In one of these meteorites recently examined by Dr. Flight, the following percentages of various gases were noted: Of carbonic oxide, 31.88; of carbonic acid gas, 0.12; of hydrogen, 45.79; of olefiant gas, 4.55; and of nitrogen, 17.66.” The presence of olefiantgas at once suggests the hydrocarbons of the cometic nucleus. The presence of this gas cannot be accounted for by the passage of the meteorite through our atmosphere, nor can that of hydrogen, and these are two characteristic gases, together with the vapor of carbon, constantly found to exist in comets.
As before explained, the advent of a comet into our solar system is that of a stranger, with electric polarity the opposite of that of the planetary electrospheres and identical with that of the sun. Under the combined influence of the solar gravity and perturbation by the gravity of the planets these foreign bodies tend to shorten their periods, and finally fall into the ordinary array of the bodies which compose our own solar system. But when this occurs they will, in turn, become contributors to, instead of antagonists of, the energy of the sun; in other words, they must then conform electrically to the condition of the family into which they have married,—that is to say, the planets,—and a reversal of their electrical polarity will take place. This reversal of polarity is no novelty in the operation of electrical apparatus. In “Electricity in the Service of Man” we read as follows of the Voss induction machine: “This machine is exceedingly powerful in favorable weather, but has an important defectin a tendency to self-reversal, which is apt to occur at a stoppage. This defect can be produced in a Voss machine, when desired,by holding a metal pointto the positive brushK. The two derived inductive circuits are beautifully manifestedwhen this machine is worked in the dark. A luminous stream is seen pouring towards the collecting combLon whichever side of the machine the comb is positive.” It will thus be seen that simple contact of a neutral (or negatively opposite) body will reverse the electrical polarity of this machine, or even the interruption of its motion will do so at times. Possibly a similar reversal may be produced in a comet by the contact in whole or in part of its nucleus with a planetary electrosphere, since the action of gravity is entirely independent of that of the attraction or repulsion of the electrospheres of both planetary and cometic bodies. Such reversal of polarity in a comet would at once extinguish its luminosity, and the generation of oxygen would at once replace the prior generation of hydrogen, and herein we may find explained the presence of carbonic oxide in large volume and carbonic acid in small volume in the meteorite above referred to, and of which gases Professor Proctor says, “It is quite certain these gases were not taken up by the meteorolite during its flight through the air.” These aggregations of discrete meteoric bodies, loosely adherent by mutual gravity alone, would be gradually torn apart by planetary interference and dragged into streams of small bodies, thenceforth traversing space in elliptical orbits around the sun, just as do the planets and planetoids. Cyanogen, also, the deadly gas so frequently found to exist in enormous quantities in the nuclei of comets, would at once disappear, by double conversion into carbonic acid,or oxide, and ammonia, or nitrogen, so that this danger, as the result of a comet’s possible approach to the earth’s atmosphere, may be dismissed from apprehension.
It will be seen that all the enormous difficulties in the phenomena of comets find an explanation in the operation of the same universal laws which we have endeavored to apply to the other sidereal bodies. In conclusion, we may cite the following from Dr. Huggins: “Broadly, the different applications of principles of electricity which have been suggested group themselves about the common idea that great electrical disturbances are set up by the sun’s action in connection with the vaporization of some of the matter of the nucleus, and that the tail is probably matter carried away, possibly in connection with electric discharges, under an electrical influence of repulsion exerted by the sun. This view necessitates the supposition that the sun is strongly electrified, either negatively or positively, and, further, that in the processes taking place in the comet, either of vaporization or of some other kind, the matter thrown out by the nucleus has become strongly electrified in the same way as the sun,—that is, negatively if the sun’s electricity is negative, or positively if the sun’s is positive. The enormous disturbances which the spectroscope shows to be always at work in the sun must be accompanied by electrical changes of equal magnitude, but we know nothing as to how far these are all, or the great majority of them, in one direction, so as to cause the sun to maintainpermanently a high electrical state, whether positive or negative.” The above speculations will have thus become demonstrated facts (though not in the mode suggested by the above writer) as soon as we clearly understand that, instead of the sun’s “enormous disturbances” producing “electrical changes of equal magnitude,” it is the electrical changes of equal magnitude which themselves cause the sun’s disturbances, and that the sun’s negative electrical polarity is permanently fixed by the opposite and positive polarity of the planetary electrospheres, and that all these various phenomena are but the normal expression of a single universal law, and are all due to the constant interaction of planetary, solar, and cometic electrospheres, in accordance with the well-established principles of electrical science. If, however, we consider, as is generally believed to be the case, the sun itself to be the sole prime source of its visible energy, nothing but difficulty and vague speculation can be looked for on every hand; but by relegating the solar orb to its proper place, and taking as the starting-point the true source of all energy,—to wit, the hidden forces embodied in the vapors or gases of interstellar space,—the whole process and mode of action will logically follow, and obscurity and difficulty together disappear. This principle, properly understood, is a master-key which will unlock every problem and interpret every enigma which the realms of interstellar space can present.