THE SOLAR MUTABILITY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 731, 1 November 1869, Page 4

THE SOLAR MUTABILITY.

oTQiii tjie Spectator, 3r,d Jitfy.) ffciENCE in every day teaching us to ■fhinlt of the Sun, and what have ¥)qxv been so long called the " fixed " stars, with less and less of that sense pf fixity which their enormous importance to planetary beings would seem to render desirable. Not only jhave we learned that all these socalled fixed centres of separate universes are themselves travelling in different directions (dragging their planetary systems after them) with enormous speed, though their distances from our own system are so great that, in the few centuries we have had to study them, the change has not been very apparent to ordinary perceptions; but we have also learned that many of them are "variable" stars —our own sun amongst the number—becoming brighter and again, less bright at fixed inteiyals of years; that some jof them have broken up some years (or perhaps thousands of years) before the blank caused by their disappearance could have struck the human retina. Nay more, we now know that our own sun —resernbling in this probably most other solar bodies of the same kind—is in so highly fluid and excitable a condition as to be constantly sendjng out from its surface forked tongues, thousands of miles in extent, of inflamed hydrogen gas, like the flickering gas from the stars of a street illuniination \ and moreover, to he subject to great periodical disturbances, now called "magnetic storms," which are in all probability paused by certain combinations in the movements of those little solid bodies, on one of which we live, round the sun. Even now one such epoch of magnetic storm seems to be thought pretty near at hand. The sun has been lately exhibiting the niost surprising forms of disturbance, and presenting to scientific eyes less M fixity " of essence than ever. Spots so vast that we must estimate their dimensions by millions of square miles have broken out from time to time, and have presented rapid changes of figure, indicating Mie action of forces of inconceivable in tensity. Clusters of smaller spols, extending over yet vaster areas, have exhibited every form of disturbance known to the solar physicist, and every degree of light, from the apparent blackness (in reality only rela tive) of the nuclei, to the intense brilliance of the faculous ridges. And we now know these appearances are not merely matters fqr the curious, with which, as they happen at a distance of above ninety millions of mile*, practical men need not concern themselves. In point of fact, it is by no means impossible that the issues of peace or war, of a financial crisis, or a religious agitation, may he closely bound up with these phenomena —if not, indeed which is also quite possible-— the sudden disappearance of our whole system after the fashion of other solar systems which have thus disappeared. This mudi, at least, is Gertain, that the va>t changes now soingonin the physical constitution of the sun are changes which do most powerfully affect the electric condition of our earth, which have in former years caused the most violent disturbances in the various artificial as well as natural electric apparatus of the world we live in, and which, to speak qf the least of all its possible effects, might, just as well as not, happen .*ome day to throw the electric condition of every telegraphic pable on our planet, under the sea 01 above it, into the inost dire confusion, and send down telegraphic companies' shares to zero in a lump, even if they did not contrive to telegraph to ris, after some strange inarticulate fashion, that shares in all public companies; even in that yery limited public company, the human race, are, in a physical point of view, pf yeuy doubtful value indeed. Let us explain briefly to, what we ftliude.

On September 1, 1859, shortly "before noon, two astionomers, Messrs Hodgson and Carrington~-one at Oxford, the other \n London —were at the same instant scrutinizing a large group of sun spots. On a sudfe? two intensely bright patches of

light appeared in front of the cluster. So brilliant were they that ifcje ob servers thought the darkening screens attached to their telescopes must have been fractured. But this was found not to be the case, The bright spots indicated some process going on upon the surface—a process of such activity that, wit-bin five -minutes, the spots travelled over a space of nearly 34,000 miles. Now, at the Kew Observatory there are selfregistering magnetic instruments which indicate the processes of change by which the subtle influences of terrestrial magnetism wax and wane A* one time, the line traced by the pointer will be marked by scarcely perceptible undulations, indicating the almost, quiescent state of the great terrestrial magnet. At another, well-marked waves along the line exhibit the pulsations of the magnetic system, influenced in a manner as yet unintelligible to the physicist. And then there is a third form of disturbance—the sharp, sudden jerks of the pointer exhibit ins the occurrence of one of those mysterious phenomena termed " magnetic storms." When the records of the Kew Observatory came to be looked oyer, it was found that at the very instant in which the brilliant spots of light had appeared to Messrs Hodgson and Oarrington, the selfregistering istruments had been subjected to the third and most significant form of disturbance —a magnetic storm, began, in fact, as the light broke out on the sun's surface. But this was not th,e only evidence of the sympathy with which the earth responded to the solar action. It was subsequently found that soon after the spots of light had appeared the whole earth had thrilled under a mysterious magnetic influence. At the West Indies, in South America, in Australia, wherever magnetic observations are systematically made, the observers had the same story to tell. In the telegraphic stations at Washington and Philadelphia the signalmen received strong electric shocks. In Norway telegraphic machinery was s-'et on fire. The pen of Bain's telegrapji was followed by a flame. And wherever telegraphic wires were in action, well-marked indications of disturbance presented themselves. Even this, however, was not all. The great magnetic storm was not a mere instantaneous electric thro.?. Hours passed before the disturbed earth resumed its ordinary state. And thus it happened that in nearly all parts of the earth night fell while the storm wav yet in progress, During that night magnificent auroras spread their waving streamers over the sky, both in the northern and the southern hemisphere. As the disturbed needle vibrated,the colored streamers waved responsive, and it was only when the magnetic storm was subsiding that ti>e auroral lights fadea from the heavens.

Now, it is evident that these phenomena show the most intimate relation between these peculiar disturbances in the sun and the magnetic currents of our own earth. Directly one of these changes takes place upwards of ninety millions of miles away, the electric condition of our planet is changed in some mys terious way, of which our instru ments. and even the condition of our sky, bear record. The pens of all our telegraphic wires may some day trace in flame a handwriting more ominous of human destiny than was the handwriting which during Belshazzar's feast ti aced a warning on the wall of the fall of the Babylonian dv nasty, Moreover, note this, that these changes in the condition of the sun tal?e place at intervals of about eleven yeaps. The variable star which swings us round it, as well as supplying us with heat and light and (apparently) magnetism, clouds over in eleven years with these spots, so that it seems most likely that every eleven years certain magnetic changes recur which have not occurred in the interval. If so, perhaps the magnetic excitement of 1859 will recur, and ;t aiay b,e in much greater force, next year—in 1870. And if it does, how are we to say what may or may not recur with it? It is quite that those periods of speculative financial excitement—which are also said to

follow a periodical law of something like the same period—may be more or less dependant on the magnetic condition of our planet, that so mean a phenomenon as speculative frenzy on the various stock exchanges of Europe maybe more or less connected with these wonderful discharges of voltaic batteries in the si?n. Is it quite impossible that the electric political condition of Europe in 1848—and again at an interval of eleven years, in the year of Italian revival and revolution, 1859—may , not recur after one more period of eleven years, in 1870, in consequence ■ of the returning epoch of magnetic ' excitement in the sun 1 It would ( he ridiculous to affirm that there , could be no connexion between the i moral excitability- of nations and j electric phenomena on so grand a Kcale as this; nor would it in any , degree be a grossly materialistic i explanation of moral and spiritual • changes, any more than it is a material explanation of moral and spiritual changes to say that starving j people are deficient in moral spirit, and that a storm of rain depresses the most gallant army that ever fought. Could we really establish any periodic law of electric excitement on the earth, it would not be irrational, but in the highest degree rational, to expect marked human phenomena in connexion with i —- either a great concurrent depression or a great concorrent stimulus to Ihe energies of the human brain. But after all, what strikes our iuiagination most is the curious insight we are beginning to glean of the highly susceptible and sensitive condition of the sun. That a mass but little denser, even as a whole, than water, nearly four times as light, bulk for bulk, as that of our own earth, and surrounded by an envelope of burning gas, which is by comparison with the intense heat and light of the proper surface of the sun itself mere cold and darkness—that a mere wandering flame of this kind, shooting rapidly through space, an iron-sm lting furnace throwing out tongues of tire on all sides, and so highly susceptible to external influence that certain combinations of planets which, when all thrown into the same scale, would make up only an infinitesimal portion of the suns mass, cause the most marvellous disturbances in his physical constitution and lead to magnetic storms such as we have described on his surface—that such a body as this, we say, should yet for thousands of years exercise so orderly, continuous, and consistent an influence over the development of our terrestrial world and bur hitman affairs, does seem truly marvellous. Can anything be conceived less apparently likely to lead to fixity of tenure in our universe than a centre for it such as this—a great boiling furnace of forces enveloped in an atmosphere of flaming gas, and subject to the most violent superficial excitements under the most apparently insignificant external influences'? The old Hebrew conception of an earth "founded on the seas and established on the floods," which had been made so fast ihat it "could not be moved," was a conception of perfect solidity compared with that heliocentric basis of our universe—a hurricane of flame tjie disturbances of which might perhaps be best represented to our imagination by the occasional explosion of a planet or two of nitroglycerine—which we are compelled to substitute. Yet hence pioceed attractions of gravitation which have not sensibly altered since the life of man xipon the earth—waves of light indicating by their spectra the burning of the very same substances in the sun as v ere being consumed in all probability when the words " Let light be " were first registered—and, as we now appear lively to learn, periodic magnetic impulses, recurring with the punctuality of and eclipses, certain to, be fid) of import for us, and yet not improbably of the same nature as those greater hurricanes by which other suns have perished. Is it possible to conceive a more apparently unstable centre and fountain of a universe of law and or4er ? Is it possible to conceive a more impressive lesson on tbe words : '" He maketh His ministers a flaming fire " \