Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1900: Vol. 56, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1900: Vol. 56, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
One of the striking results to which this investigation has led is the
demonstration of the substantial unity of the materials from which the
earth and the various heavenly bodies have been constructed. Those
elements which enter most abundantly into the composition of the earth
are also the elements which appear to enter most abundantly into the
composition of the sun and of the stars. The iron and the hydrogen, the
sodium and the many other materials of which our globe is so largely
formed, are also the selfsame materials which, in widely different
proportions and in very different associations, go to form the heavenly
bodies. This conclusion is as interesting as it was unexpected. It
might naturally have been thought that, seeing the sun is separated
from us by nearly a hundred million miles, and seeing that the stars
are separated from us by millions of millions of miles, all these
celestial bodies must be constructed in quite a different manner and
of substances quite distinct from the substances which we know on
this earth. But this is not the case. Indeed, at the present moment
it seems doubtful if there be any element which spectrum analysis
has hitherto disclosed in the celestial bodies which is not also a
recognized terrestrial body. The well-known case of helium gives a
striking illustration. In the year 1868 Sir Norman Lockyer detected
the presence of rays in the solar spectrum which were unknown at that
time in terrestrial chemistry. These rays appeared to emanate from
some substance which, though present in the sun, did not then appear
to belong to the earth. This element was accordingly named “helium,”
to indicate its solar origin. Twenty-five years later Professor
Ramsay discovered a substance on the earth which had been hitherto
unrecognized, and which, on examination, yielded in the spectrum
precisely those same rays which had been found in the so-called
helium from the sun. In consequence of this discovery this element
is now recognized as a terrestrial body. It is indeed a remarkable
illustration of the extraordinary character of modern methods of
research that a substance should have first been discovered at a
distance of nearly one hundred million miles, that same substance being
all the time, though no doubt in very small quantities, a constituent
of our earth as well as of the sun.
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