No one will pretend to allege that no gases can be produced in the
shell of the sun, or to say anything against those formed in the
inner half of it finding their way to the hollow centre, and going on
increasing there till they were able to force their way out through
the shell; that is, until their pressure was equal to the resistance
offered by the gaseous body of the sun, or against their temperature
increasing until it came to correspond to their density and most
probably rising to a much higher degree. Such, then, must even now be
the construction of the sun, as reduced to its present diameter and
density. That is, a hollow sphere consisting of cosmic matter combined
with gases and having a hollow centre filled with chemically formed
gases or vapours.
Here it may be argued that the sun ceases to be a hollow sphere, but
that is not so. The most that can be said about it is that it is a
hollow sphere with the empty part filled up. It would only be in much
the same condition as a hollow globe of iron filled with melted
antimony or bismuth. Its construction would be in no way changed by
the empty hollow being filled up, so long as its condition remained
gaseous--not changed to liquid or solid. The only difference in our
sphere would be that its density would virtually be the same from what
we have called the region of greatest density to the centre, which
would not only involve a greater distance of that region from the
surface of the sphere, but another reduction of the above mentioned
densities of the sun; for we cannot in any way imagine that the
pressure in its interior can be less than many thousands of atmospheres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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