The Source of Solar Energy

Abstract

I HAVE not Mr. Proctor's “Other Worlds” by me to refer to, but my impression on reading that book some little time ago, certainly was, that if it did not directly support the meteoric theory of solar energy, it at least favoured the idea of innumerable meteors falling into the sun. The principal portion of my letter in last week's NATURE, was not, however, so much addressed against any special views of Mr. Proctor's relative to this meteoric theory, as it was against the probability of meteors falling on to or into the sun at all. And whatever be the real value of the arguments I used, I certainly had not before seen them anywhere clearly stated. The question as to meteors being consumed in producing heat by friction in the solar atmosphere, or of their striking the sun's proper surface in a solid form, is of very secondary importance, and would of course be determined chiefly by the size and nature of the meteoric bodies themselves.* The potential or heat result theoretically would be the same either way; though in the former case it might hardly so well explain how whilst heated flames are shot up 60,000 or 70,000 miles from the sun itself, that body is also probably far hotter than the upper regions of this very atmosphere, in which the meteors themselves would be giving out heat.