Some of the common terrestrial elements found in the sun are: Aluminium. Calcium. Carbon. Copper. Hydrogen. Iron. Lead. Nickel. Potassium. Silicon. Silver. Sodium. Tin. Zinc. Oxygen (?) Whatever differences of chemical structure may exist between the sun and the earth, it seems that we must regard these bodies as more like than unlike to each other in substance, and we are brought back to the second of our alternatives: there must be some influence opposing the force of gravity and making the substance of the sun light instead of heavy, and we need not seek far to find it in-- 117. THE HEAT OF THE SUN.--That the sun is hot is too evident to require proof, and it is a familiar fact that heat expands most substances and makes them less dense. The sun's heat falling upon the earth expands it and diminishes its density in some small degree, and we have only to imagine this process of expansion continued until the earth's diameter becomes 58 per cent larger than it now is, to find the earth's density reduced to a level with that of the sun. Just how much the temperature of the earth must be raised to produce this amount of expansion we do not know, neither do we know accurately the temperature of the sun, but there can be no doubt that heat is the cause of the sun's low density and that the corresponding temperature is very high. Before we inquire more closely into the sun's temperature, it will be well to draw a sharp distinction between the two terms heat and temperature, which are often used as if they meant the same thing. Heat is a form of energy which may be found in varying degree in every substance, whether warm or cold--a block of ice contains a considerable amount of heat--while temperature corresponds to our sensations of warm and cold, and measures the extent to which heat is concentrated in the body. It is the amount of heat per molecule of the body. A barrel of warm water contains more heat than the flame of a match, but its temperature is not so high. Bearing in mind this distinction, we seek to determine not the amount of heat contained in the sun but the sun's temperature, and this involves the same difficulty as does the question, What is the temperature of a locomotive? It is one thing in the fire box and another thing in the driving wheels, and still another at the headlight; and so with the sun, its temperature is certainly different in different parts--one thing at the center and another at the surface. Even those parts which we see are covered by a veil of gases which produce by absorption the dark lines of the solar spectrum, and seriously interfere both with the emission of energy from the sun and with our attempts at measuring the temperature of those parts of the surface from which that energy streams.