In the year 1826, Heinrich Schwabe of Dessau, elated with the hope of speedily delivering himself from the hereditary incubus of an apothecary's shop,[347] obtained from Munich a small telescope and began to observe the sun. His choice of an object for his researches was instigated by his friend Harding of Göttingen. It was a peculiarly happy one. The changes visible in the solar surface were then generally regarded as no less capricious than the changes in the skies of our temperate regions. Consequently, the reckoning and registering of sun-spots was a task hardly more inviting to an astronomer than the reckoning and registering of summer clouds. Cassini, Keill, Lemonnier, Lalande, were unanimous in declaring that no trace of regularity could be detected in their appearances or effacements.[348] Delambre pronounced them "more curious than really useful."[349] Even Herschel, profoundly as he studied them, and intimately as he was convinced of their importance as symptoms of solar activity, saw no reason to suspect that their abundance and scarcity were subject to orderly alternation. One man alone in the eighteenth century, Christian Horrebow of Copenhagen, divined their periodical character, and foresaw the time when the effects of the sun's vicissitudes upon the globes revolving round him might be investigated with success; but this prophetic utterance was of the nature of a soliloquy rather than of a communication, and remained hidden away in an unpublished journal until 1859, when it was brought to light in a general ransacking of archives.[350]
Indeed, Schwabe himself was far from anticipating the discovery which fell to his share. He compared his fortune to that of Saul, who, seeking his father's asses, found a kingdom.[351] For the hope which inspired his early resolution lay in quite another direction. His patient ambush was laid for a possible intramercurial planet, which, he thought, must sooner or later betray its existence in crossing the face of the sun. He took, however, the most effectual measures to secure whatever new knowledge might be accessible. During forty-three years his "imperturbable telescope"[352] never failed, weather and health permitting, to bring in its daily report as to how many, or if any, spots were visible on the sun's disc, the information obtained being day by day recorded on a simple and unvarying system. In 1843 he made his first announcement of a probable decennial period,[353] but it met with no general attention; although Julius Schmidt of Bonn (afterwards director of the Athens Observatory) and Gautier of Geneva were impressed with his figures, and Littrow had himself, in 1836,[354] hinted at the likelihood of some kind of regular recurrence. Schwabe, however, worked on, gathering each year fresh evidence of a law such as he had indicated; and when Humboldt published in 1851, in the third volume of his Kosmos,[355] a table of the sun-spot statistics collected by him from 1826 downwards, the strength of his case was perceived with, so to speak, a start of surprise; the reality and importance of the discovery were simultaneously recognised, and the persevering Hofrath of Dessau found himself famous among astronomers. His merit—recognised by the bestowal of the Astronomical Society's Gold Medal in 1857—consisted in his choice of an original and appropriate line of work, and in the admirable tenacity of purpose with which he pursued it. His resources and acquirements were those of an ordinary amateur; he was distinguished solely by the unfortunately rare power of turning both to the best account. He died where he was born and had lived, April 11, 1875, at the ripe age of eighty-six.
Meanwhile an investigation of a totally different character, and conducted by totally different means, had been prosecuted to a very similar conclusion. Two years after Schwabe began his solitary observations, Humboldt gave the first impulse, at the Scientific Congress of Berlin in 1828, to a great international movement for attacking simultaneously, in various parts of the globe, the complex problem of terrestrial magnetism. Through the genius and energy of Gauss, Göttingen became its centre. Thence new[Pg 127] apparatus, and a new system for its employment, issued; there, in 1833, the first regular magnetic observatory was founded, whilst at Göttingen was fixed the universal time-standard for magnetic observations. A letter addressed by Humboldt in April, 1836, to the Duke of Sussex as President of the Royal Society, enlisted the co-operation of England. A network of magnetic stations was spread all over the British dominions, from Canada to Van Diemen's Land; measures were concerted with foreign authorities, and an expedition was fitted out, under the able command of Captain (afterwards Sir James) Clark Ross, for the special purpose of bringing intelligence on the subject from the dismal neighbourhood of the South Pole. In 1841, the elaborate organisation created by the disinterested efforts of scientific "agitators" was complete; Gauss's "magnetometers" were vibrating under the view of attentive observers in five continents, and simultaneous results began to be recorded.
Ten years later, in September, 1851, Dr. John Lamont, the Scotch director of the Munich Observatory, in reviewing the magnetic observations made at Göttingen and Munich from 1835 to 1850, perceived with some surprise that they gave unmistakable indications of a period which he estimated at 10-1/3 years.[356] The manner in which this periodicity manifested itself requires a word of explanation. The observations in question referred to what is called the "declination" of the magnetic needle—that is, to the position assumed by it with reference to the points of the compass when moving freely in a horizontal plane. Now this position—as was discovered by Graham in 1722—is subject to a small daily fluctuation, attaining its maximum towards the east about 8 A.M., and its maximum towards the west shortly before 2 P.M. In other words, the direction of the needle approaches (in these countries at the present time) nearest to the true north some four hours before noon, and departs farthest from it between one and two hours after noon. It was the range of this daily variation that Lamont found to increase and diminish once in every 10-1/3 years.
In the following winter, Sir Edward Sabine, ignorant as yet of Lamont's conclusion, undertook to examine a totally different set of observations. The materials in his hands had been collected at the British colonial stations of Toronto and Hobarton from 1843 to 1848, and had reference, not to the regular diurnal swing of the needle, but to those curious spasmodic vibrations, the inquiry into the laws of which was the primary object of the vast organisation set on foot by Humboldt and Gauss. Yet the upshot was practically the same. Once in about ten years, magnetic disturbances (termed by Humboldt "storms") were perceived to reach a maximum of[Pg 128] violence and frequency. Sabine was the first to note the coincidence between this unlooked-for result and Schwabe's sun-spot period. He showed that, so far as observation had yet gone, the two cycles of change agreed perfectly both in duration and phase, maximum corresponding to maximum, minimum to minimum. What the nature of the connection could be that bound together by a common law effects so dissimilar as the rents in the luminous garment of the sun, and the swayings to and fro of the magnetic needle, was and still remains beyond the reach of well-founded theory; but the fact was from the first undeniable.
The memoir containing this remarkable disclosure was presented to the Royal Society, March 18, and read May 6, 1852.[357] On the 31st of July following, Rudolf Wolf at Berne,[358] and on the 18th of August, Alfred Gautier at Sion,[359] announced, separately and independently, perfectly similar conclusions. This triple event is perhaps the most striking instance of the successful employment of the Baconian method of co-operation in discovery, by which "particulars" are amassed by one set of investigators—corresponding to the "Depredators" and "Inoculators" of Solomon's House—while inductions are drawn from them by another and a higher class—the "Interpreters of Nature." Yet even here the convergence of two distinct lines of research was wholly fortuitous, and skilful combination owed the most brilliant part of its success to the unsought bounty of what we call Fortune.
The exactness of the coincidence thus brought to light was fully confirmed by further inquiries. A diligent search through the scattered records of sun-spot observations, from the time of Galileo and Scheiner onwards, put Wolf[360] in possession of materials by which he was enabled to correct Schwabe's loosely-indicated decennial period to one of slightly over eleven (11.11) years; and he further showed that this fell in with the ebb and flow of magnetic change even better than Lamont's 10-1/3 year cycle. The analogy was also pointed out between the "light-curve," or zig-zagged line representing on paper the varying intensity in the lustre of certain stars, and the similar delineation of spot-frequency; the ascent from minimum to maximum being, in both cases, usually steeper than the descent from maximum to minimum; while an additional point of resemblance was furnished by the irregularities in height of the various maxima. In other words, both the number of spots on the sun and the brightness of variable stars increase, as a rule, more rapidly than[Pg 129] they decrease; nor does the amount of that increase, in either instance, show any approach to uniformity.
The endeavour, suggested by the very nature of the phenomenon, to connect sun-spots with weather was less successful. The first attempt of the kind was made by Sir William Herschel in 1801, and a very notable one it was. Meteorological statistics, save of the scantiest and most casual kind, did not then exist; but the price of corn from year to year was on record, and this, with full recognition of its inadequacy, he adopted as his criterion. Nor was he much better off for information respecting the solar condition. What little he could obtain, however, served, as he believed, to confirm his surmise that a copious emission of light and heat accompanies an abundant formation of "openings" in the dazzling substance whence our supply of those indispensable commodities is derived.[361] He gathered, in short, from his inquiries very much what he had expected to gather, namely, that the price of wheat was high when the sun showed an unsullied surface, and that food and spots became plentiful together.[362]
Yet this plausible inference was scarcely borne out by a more exact collocation of facts. Schwabe failed to detect any reflection of the sun-spot period in his meteorological register. Gautier[363] reached a provisional conclusion the reverse—though not markedly the reverse—of Herschel's. Wolf, in 1852, derived from an examination of Vogel's collection of Zürich Chronicles (1000-1800 A.D.) evidence showing (as he thought) that minimum years were usually wet and stormy, maximum years dry and genial;[364] but a subsequent review of the subject in 1859 convinced him that no relation of any kind between the two kinds of effects was traceable.[365] With the singular affection of our atmosphere known as the Aurora Borealis (more properly Aurora Polaris) the case was different. Here the Zürich Chronicles set Wolf on the right track in leading him to associate such luminous manifestations with a disturbed condition of the sun; since subsequent detailed observation has exhibited the curve of auroral frequency as following with such fidelity the jagged lines figuring to the eye the fluctuations of solar[Pg 130] and magnetic activity, as to leave no reasonable doubt that all three rise and sink together under the influence of a common cause. As long ago as 1716,[366] Halley had conjectured that the Northern Lights were due to magnetic "effluvia," but there was no evidence on the subject forthcoming until Hiorter observed at Upsala in 1741 their agitating influence upon the magnetic needle. That the effect was no casual one was made superabundantly clear by Arago's researches in 1819 and subsequent years. Now both were perceived to be swayed by the same obscure power of cosmical disturbance.
The sun is not the only one of the heavenly bodies by which the magnetism of the earth is affected. Proofs of a similar kind of lunar action were laid by Kreil in 1841 before the Bohemian Society of Sciences, and with minor corrections were fully substantiated by Sabine's more extended researches. It was thus ascertained that each lunar day, or the interval of twenty-four hours and about fifty-four minutes between two successive meridian passages of our satellite, is marked by a perceptible, though very small, double oscillation of the needle—two progressive movements from east to west, and two returns from west to east.[367] Moreover, the lunar, like the solar influence (as was proved in each case by Sabine's analysis of the Hobarton and Toronto observations), extends to all three "magnetic elements," affecting not only the position of the horizontal or declination needle, but also the dip and intensity. It seems not unreasonable to attribute some portion of the same subtle power to the planets and even to the stars, though with effects rendered imperceptible by distance.
We have now to speak of the discovery and application to the heavenly bodies of a totally new method of investigation. Spectrum analysis may be shortly described as a mode of distinguishing the various species of matter by the kind of light proceeding from each. This definition at once explains how it is that, unlike every other system of chemical analysis, it has proved available in astronomy. Light, so far as quality is concerned, ignores distance. No intrinsic change, that we yet know of, is produced in it by a journey from the farthest bounds of the visible universe; so that, provided only that in quantity it remain sufficient for the purpose, its peculiarities can be equally well studied whether the source of its vibrations be one foot or a hundred billion miles distant. Now the most obvious distinction between one kind of light and another resides in colour. But of this distinction the eye takes cognisance in an æsthetic, not in a scientific sense. It finds gladness in the "thousand tints" of nature, but can neither analyse nor define them. Here the refracting[Pg 131] prism—or the combination of prisms known as the "spectroscope"—comes to its aid, teaching it to measure as well as to perceive. It furnishes, in a word, an accurate scale of colour. The various rays which, entering the eye together in a confused crowd, produce a compound impression made up of undistinguishable elements, are, by the mere passage through a triangular piece of glass, separated one from the other, and ranged side by side in orderly succession, so that it becomes possible to tell at a glance what kinds of light are present, and what absent. Thus, if we could only be assured that the various chemical substances when made to glow by heat, emit characteristic rays—rays, that is, occupying a place in the spectrum reserved for them, and for them only—we should at once be in possession of a mode of identifying such substances with the utmost readiness and certainty. This assurance, which forms the solid basis of spectrum analysis, was obtained slowly and with difficulty.
The first to employ the prism in the examination of various flames (for it is only in a state of vapour that matter emits distinctive light) was a young Scotchman named Thomas Melvill, who died in 1753, at the age of twenty-seven. He studied the spectrum of burning spirits, into which were successively introduced sal ammoniac, potash, alum, nitre, and sea-salt, and observed the singular predominance, under almost all circumstances, of a particular shade of yellow light, perfectly definite in its degree of refrangibility[368]—in other words, taking up a perfectly definite position in the spectrum. His experiments were repeated by Morgan,[369] Wollaston, and—with far superior precision and diligence—by Fraunhofer.[370] The great Munich optician, whose work was completely original, rediscovered Melvill's deep yellow ray and measured its place in the colour-scale. It has since become well known as the "sodium line," and has played a very important part in the history of spectrum analysis. Nevertheless, its ubiquity and conspicuousness long impeded progress. It was elicited by the combustion of a surprising variety of substances—sulphur, alcohol, ivory, wood, paper; its persistent visibility suggesting the accomplishment of some universal process of nature rather than the presence of one individual kind of matter. But if spectrum analysis were to exist as a science at all, it could only be by attaining certainty as to the unvarying association of one special substance with each special quality of light.
Thus perplexed, Fox Talbot[371] hesitated in 1826 to enounce this[Pg 132] fundamental principle. He was inclined to believe that the presence in the spectrum of any individual ray told unerringly of the volatilisation in the flame under scrutiny of some body as whose badge or distinctive symbol that ray might be regarded; but the continual prominence of the yellow beam staggered him. It appeared, indeed, without fail where sodium was; but it also appeared where it might be thought only reasonable to conclude that sodium was not. Nor was it until thirty years later that William Swan,[372] by pointing out the extreme delicacy of the spectral test, and the singularly wide dispersion of sodium, made it appear probable (but even then only probable) that the questionable yellow line was really due invariably to that substance. Common salt (chloride of sodium) is, in fact, the most diffusive of solids. It floats in the air; it flows with water; every grain of dust has its attendant particle; its absolute exclusion approaches the impossible. And withal, the light that it gives in burning is so intense and concentrated, that if a single grain be divided into 180 million parts, and one alone of such inconceivably minute fragments be present in a source of light, the spectroscope will show unmistakably its characteristic beam.
Amongst the pioneers of knowledge in this direction were Sir John Herschel[373]—who, however, applied himself to the subject in the interests of optics, not of chemistry—W. A. Miller,[374] and Wheatstone. The last especially made a notable advance when, in the course of his studies on the "prismatic decomposition" of the electric light, he reached the significant conclusion that the rays visible in its spectrum were different for each kind of metal employed as "electrodes."[375] Thus indications of a wider principle were to be found in several quarters, but no positive certainty on any single point was obtained, until, in 1859, Gustav Kirchhoff, professor of physics in the University of Heidelberg, and his colleague, the eminent chemist Robert Bunsen, took the matter in hand. By them the general question as to the necessary and invariable connection of certain rays in the spectrum with certain kinds of matter, was first resolutely confronted, and first definitely answered. It was answered affirmatively—else there could have been no science of spectrum analysis—as the result of experiments more numerous, more stringent, and more precise than had previously been[Pg 133] undertaken.[376] And the assurance of their conclusion was rendered doubly sure by the discovery, through the peculiarities of their light alone, of two new metals, named from the blue and red rays by which they were respectively distinguished, "cæsium," and "rubidium."[377] Both were immediately afterwards actually obtained in small quantities by evaporation of the Durckheim mineral waters.
The link connecting this important result with astronomy may now be indicated. In the year 1802 it occurred to William Hyde Wollaston to substitute for the round hole used by Newton and his successors for the admittance of light to be examined with the prism, an elongated "crevice" 1/20th of an inch in width. He thereupon perceived that the spectrum, thus formed of light, as it were, purified by the abolition of overlapping images, was traversed by seven dark lines. These he took to be natural boundaries of the various colours,[378] and satisfied with this quasi-explanation, allowed the subject to drop. It was independently taken up after twelve years by a man of higher genius. In the course of experiments on light, directed towards the perfecting of his achromatic lenses, Fraunhofer, by means of a slit and a telescope, made the surprising discovery that the solar spectrum is crossed, not by seven, but by thousands of obscure transverse streaks.[379] Of these he counted some 600, and carefully mapped 324, while a few of the most conspicuous he set up (if we may be permitted the expression) as landmarks, measuring their distances apart with a theodolite, and affixing to them the letters of the alphabet, by which they are still universally known. Nor did he stop here. The same system of examination applied to the rest of the heavenly bodies showed the mild effulgence of the moon and planets to be deficient in precisely the same rays as sunlight; while in the stars it disclosed the differences in likeness which are always an earnest of increased knowledge. The spectra of Sirius and Castor, instead of being delicately ruled crosswise throughout, like that of the sun, were seen to be interrupted by three massive bars of darkness—two in the blue and one in the green;[380] the light of Pollux, on the other hand, seemed precisely similar to sunlight attenuated by distance or reflection, and that of Capella, Betelgeux, and Procyon to share some of its peculiarities. One solar line especially—that marked in his map with the letter D—proved common to all the four last-mentioned stars; and it was remarkable that it exactly coincided in position with the conspicuous yellow beam (afterwards, as we have said, identified with the light of glowing sodium) which he had already[Pg 134] found to accompany most kinds of combustion. Moreover, both the dark solar and the bright terrestrial "D lines" were displayed by the refined Munich appliances as double.
In this striking correspondence, discovered by Fraunhofer in 1815, was contained the very essence of solar chemistry; but its true significance did not become apparent until long afterwards. Fraunhofer was by profession, not a physicist, but a practical optician. Time pressed; he could not and would not deviate from his appointed track; all that was possible to him was to indicate the road to discovery, and exhort others to follow it.[381]
Partially and inconclusively at first this was done. The "fixed lines" (as they were called) of the solar spectrum took up the position of a standing problem, to the solution of which no approach seemed possible. Conjectures as to their origin were indeed rife. An explanation put forward by Zantedeschi[382] and others, and dubiously favoured by Sir David Brewster and Dr. J. H. Gladstone,[383] was that they resulted from "interference"—that is, a destruction of the motion producing in our eyes the sensation of light, by the superposition of two light-waves in such a manner that the crests of one exactly fill up the hollows of the other. This effect was supposed to be brought about by imperfections in the optical apparatus employed.
A more plausible view was that the atmosphere of the earth was the agent by which sunlight was deprived of its missing beams. For a few of them this is actually the case. Brewster found in 1832 that certain dark lines, which were invisible when the sun stood high in the heavens, became increasingly conspicuous as he approached the horizon.[384] These are the well-known "atmospheric lines;" but the immense majority of their companions in the spectrum remain quite unaffected by the thickness of the stratum of air traversed by the sunlight containing them. They are then obviously due to another cause.
There remained the true interpretation—absorption in the sun's atmosphere; and this, too, was extensively canvassed. But a remarkable observation made by Professor Forbes of Edinburgh[385] on the occasion of the annular eclipse of May 15, 1836, appeared to throw discredit upon it. If the problematical dark lines were really occasioned by the stoppage of certain rays through the action of a vaporous envelope surrounding the sun, they ought, it seemed, to be[Pg 135] strongest in light proceeding from his edges, which, cutting that envelope obliquely, passed through a much greater depth of it. But the circle of light left by the interposing moon, and of course derived entirely from the rim of the solar disc, yielded to Forbes's examination precisely the same spectrum as light coming from its central parts. This circumstance helped to baffle inquirers, already sufficiently perplexed. It still remains an anomaly, of which no satisfactory explanation has been offered.
Convincing evidence as to the true nature of the solar lines was however at length, in the autumn of 1859, brought forward at Heidelburg. Kirchhoff's experimentum crucis in the matter was a very simple one. He threw bright sunshine across a space occupied by vapour of sodium, and perceived with astonishment that the dark Fraunhofer line D, instead of being effaced by flame giving a luminous ray of the same refrangibility, was deepened and thickened by the superposition.
He tried the same experiment, substituting for sunbeams light from a Drummond lamp, and with similar result. A dark furrow, corresponding in every respect to the solar D-line, was instantly seen to interrupt the otherwise unbroken radiance of its spectrum. The inference was irresistible, that the effect thus produced artificially was brought about naturally in the same way, and that sodium formed an ingredient in the glowing atmosphere of the sun.[386] This first discovery was quickly followed up by the identification of numerous bright rays in the spectra of other metallic bodies with others of the hitherto mysterious Fraunhofer lines. Kirchhoff was thus led to the conclusion that (besides sodium) iron, magnesium, calcium, and chromium, are certainly solar constituents, and that copper, zinc, barium, and nickel are also present, though in smaller quantities.[387] As to cobalt, he hesitated to pronounce, but its existence in the sun has since been established.
These memorable results were founded upon a general principle first enunciated by Kirchhoff in a communication to the Berlin Academy, December 15, 1859, and afterwards more fully developed by him.[388] It may be expressed as follows: Substances of every kind are opaque to the precise rays which they emit at the same temperature; that is to say, they stop the kinds of light or heat which they are then actually in a condition to radiate. But it does[Pg 136] not follow that cool bodies absorb the rays which they would give out if sufficiently heated. Hydrogen at ordinary temperatures, for instance, is almost perfectly transparent, but if raised to the glowing point—as by the passage of electricity—it then becomes capable of arresting, and at the same time of displaying in its own spectrum light of four distinct colours.
This principle is fundamental to solar chemistry. It gives the key to the hieroglyphics of the Fraunhofer lines. The identical characters which are written bright in terrestrial spectra are written dark in the unrolled sheaf of sun-rays; the meaning remains unchanged. It must, however, be remembered that they are only relatively dark. The substances stopping those particular tints in the neighbourhood of the sun are at the same time vividly glowing with the very same. Remove the dazzling solar background, by contrast with which they show as obscure, and they will be seen, and, at critical moments, actually have been seen, in all their native splendour. It is because the atmosphere of the sun is cooler than the globe it envelops that the different kinds of vapour constituting that atmosphere take more than they give, absorb more light than they are capable of emitting; raise them to the same temperature as the sun itself, and their powers of emission and absorption being brought exactly to the same level, the thousands of dusky rays in the solar spectrum will be at once obliterated.
The establishment of the terrestrial science of spectrum analysis was due, as we have seen, equally to Kirchhoff and Bunsen, but its celestial application to Kirchhoff alone. He effected this object of the aspirations, more or less dim, of many other thinkers and workers, by the union of two separate, though closely related lines of research—the study of the different kinds of light emitted by various bodies, and the study of the different kinds of light absorbed by them. The latter branch appears to have been first entered upon by Dr. Thomas Young in 1803;[389] it was pursued by the younger Herschel,[390] by William Allen Miller, Brewster, and Gladstone. Brewster indeed made, in 1833,[391] a formal attempt to found what might be called an inverse system of analysis with the prism based upon absorption; and his efforts were repeated, just a quarter of a century later, by Gladstone.[392] But no general point of view was attained; nor, it may be added, was it by this path attainable.
Kirchhoff's map of the solar spectrum, drawn to scale with exquisite accuracy, and printed in three shades of ink to convey the graduated obscurity of the lines, was published in the Transactions[Pg 137] of the Berlin Academy for 1861 and 1862.[393] Representations of the principal lines belonging to various elementary bodies formed, as it were, a series of marginal notes accompanying the great solar scroll, enabling the veriest tiro in the new science to decipher its meaning at a glance. Where the dark solar and bright metallic rays agreed in position, it might safely be inferred that the metal emitting them was a solar constituent; and such coincidences were numerous. In the case of iron alone, no less than sixty occurred in one-half of the spectral area, rendering the chances[394] absolutely overwhelming against mere casual conjunction. The preparation of this elaborate picture proved so trying to the eyes that Kirchhoff was compelled by failing vision to resign the latter half of the task to his pupil Hofmann. The complete map measured nearly eight feet in length.
The conclusions reached by Kirchhoff were no sooner announced than they took their place, with scarcely a dissenting voice, among the established truths of science. The broad result, that the dark lines in the spectrum of the sun afford an index to its chemical composition no less reliable than any of the tests used in the laboratory, was equally captivating to the imagination of the vulgar, and authentic in the judgment of the learned; and, like all genuine advances in the knowledge of Nature, it stimulated curiosity far more than it gratified it. Now the history of how discoveries were missed is often quite as instructive as the history of how they were made; it may then be worth while to expend a few words on the thoughts and trials by which, in the present case, the actual event was heralded.
Three times it seemed on the verge of being anticipated. The experiment, which in Kirchhoff's hands proved decisive, of passing sunlight through glowing vapours and examining the superposed spectra, was performed by Professor W. A. Miller of King's College in 1845.[395] Nay, more, it was performed with express reference to the question, then already (as has been noted) in debate, of the possible production of Fraunhofer's lines by absorption in a solar atmosphere. Yet it led to nothing.
Again, at Paris in 1849, with a view to testing the asserted coincidence between the solar D-line and the bright yellow beam in the spectrum of the electric arc (really due to the unsuspected presence of sodium), Léon Foucault threw a ray of sunshine across the arc and observed its spectrum.[396] He was surprised to see that the D-line[Pg 138] was rendered more intensely dark by the combination of lights. To assure himself still further, he substituted a reflected image of one of the white-hot carbon-points for the sunbeam, with an identical result. The same ray was missing. It needed but another step to have generalised this result, and thus laid hold of a natural truth of the highest importance; but that step was not taken. Foucault, keen and brilliant though he was, rested satisfied with the information that the voltaic arc had the power of stopping the kind of light emitted by it; he asked no further question, and was consequently the bearer of no further intelligence on the subject.
The truth conveyed by this remarkable experiment was, however, divined by one eminent man. Professor Stokes of Cambridge stated to Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), shortly after it had been made, his conviction that an absorbing atmosphere of sodium surrounded the sun. And so forcibly was his hearer impressed with the weight of the argument based upon the absolute agreement of the D-line in the solar spectrum with the yellow ray of burning sodium (then freshly certified by W. H. Miller), combined with Foucault's "reversal" of that ray, that he regularly inculcated, in his public lectures on natural philosophy at Glasgow, five or six years before Kirchhoff's discovery, not only the fact of the presence of sodium in the solar neighbourhood, but also the principle of the study of solar and stellar chemistry in the spectra of flames.[397] Yet it does not appear to have occurred to either of these two distinguished professors—themselves among the foremost of their time in the successful search for new truths—to verify practically a sagacious conjecture in which was contained the possibility of a scientific revolution. It is just to add, that Kirchhoff was unacquainted, when he undertook his investigation, either with the experiment of Foucault or the speculation of Stokes.
For C. J. Ångström, on the other hand, perhaps somewhat too much has been claimed in the way of anticipation. His Optical Researches appeared at Upsala in 1853, and in their English garb two years later.[398] They were undoubtedly pregnant with suggestion, yet made no epoch in discovery. The old perplexities continued to prevail after, as before their publication. To Ångström, indeed, belongs the great merit of having revived Euler's principle of the equivalence of emission and absorption; but he revived it in its original crude form, and without the qualifying proviso which alone gave it value as a clue to new truths. According to his statement, a body absorbs all the series of vibrations it is, under any circumstances, capable of emitting, as well as those connected with[Pg 139] them by simple harmonic relations. This is far too wide. To render it either true or useful, it had to be reduced to the cautious terms employed by Kirchhoff. Radiation strictly and necessarily corresponds with absorption only when the temperature is the same. In point of fact, Ångström was still, in 1853, divided between adsorption and interference as the mode of origin of the Fraunhofer dark rays. Very important, however, was his demonstration of the compound nature of the spark-spectrum, which he showed to be made up of the spectrum of the metallic electrodes superposed upon that of the gas or gases across which the discharge passed.
It may here be useful—since without some clear ideas on the subject no proper understanding of recent astronomical progress is possible—to take a cursory view of the elementary principles of spectrum analysis. To many of our readers they are doubtless already familiar; but it is better to appear trite to some than obscure even to a few.
The spectrum, then, of a body is simply the light proceeding from it spread out by refraction[399] into a brilliant variegated band, passing from brownish-red through crimson, orange, yellow, green, and azure into dusky violet. The reason of this spreading-out or "dispersion" is that the various colours have different wave-lengths, and consequently meet with different degrees of retardation in traversing the denser medium of the prism. The shortest and quickest vibrations (producing the sensation we call "violet") are thrown farthest away from their original path—in other words, suffer the widest "deviation;" the longest and slowest (the red) travel much nearer to it. Thus the sheaf of rays which would otherwise combine into a patch of white light are separated through the divergence of their tracks after refraction by a prism, so as to form a tinted riband. This visible spectrum is prolonged invisibly at both ends by a long range of vibrations, either too rapid or too sluggish to affect the eye as light, but recognisable through their chemical and heating effects.
Now all incandescent solid or liquid substances, and even gases ignited under great pressure, give what is called a "continuous spectrum;" that is to say, the light derived from them is of every conceivable hue. Sorted out with the prism, its tints merge imperceptibly one into the other, uninterrupted by any dark spaces. No colours, in short, are missing. But gases and vapours rendered luminous by heat emit rays of only a few tints, which accordingly form an interrupted spectrum, usually designated as one of lines or bands. And since these rays are perfectly definite and characteristic—not being the same for any two substances—it is easy to tell[Pg 140] what kind of matter is concerned in producing them. We may suppose that the inconceivably minute particles which by their rapid thrilling agitate the ethereal medium so as to produce light, are free to give out their peculiar tone of vibration only when floating apart from each other in gaseous form; but when crowded together into a condensed mass, the clear ring of the distinctive note is drowned, so to speak, in a universal molecular clang. Thus prismatic analysis has no power to identify individual kinds of matter, except when they present themselves as glowing vapours.
A spectrum is said to be "reversed" when lines previously seen bright on a dark background appear dark on a bright background. In this form it is equally characteristic of chemical composition with the "direct" spectrum, being due to absorption, as the latter is to emission. And absorption and emission are, by Kirchhoff's law, strictly correlative. This is easily understood by the analogy of sound. For just as a tuning-fork responds to sound-waves of its own pitch, but remains indifferent to those of any other, so those particles of matter whose nature it is, when set swinging by heat, to vibrate a certain number of times in a second, thus giving rise to light of a particular shade of colour, appropriate those same vibrations, and those only, when transmitted past them,—or, phrasing it otherwise, are opaque to them, and transparent to all others.
It should further be explained that the shape of the bright or dark spaces in the spectrum has nothing whatever to do with the nature of the phenomena. The "lines" and "bands" so frequently spoken of are seen as such for no other reason than because the light forming them is admitted through a narrow, straight opening. Change that opening into a fine crescent or a sinuous curve, and the "lines" will at once appear as crescents or curves.
Resuming in a sentence what has been already explained, we find that the prismatic analysis of the heavenly bodies was founded upon three classes of facts: First, the unmistakable character of the light given by each different kind of glowing vapour; secondly, the identity of the light absorbed with the light emitted by each; thirdly, the coincidence observed between rays missing from the solar spectrum and rays absorbed by various terrestrial substances. Thus, a realm of knowledge, pronounced by Morinus[400] in the seventeenth century, and no less dogmatically by Auguste Comte[401] in the nineteenth, hopelessly out of reach of the human intellect, was thrown freely open, and the chemistry of the sun and stars took at once a leading place among the experimental sciences.
The immediate increase of knowledge was not the chief result of Kirchhoff's labours; still more important was the change in the scope and methods of astronomy, which, set on foot in 1852 by the detection of a common period affecting at once the spots on the sun and the magnetism of the earth, was extended and accelerated by the discovery of spectrum analysis. The nature of that change is concisely indicated by the heading of the present chapter; we would now ask our readers to endeavour to realise somewhat distinctly what is implied by the "foundation of astronomical physics."
Just three centuries ago, Kepler drew a forecast of what he called a "physical astronomy"—a science treating of the efficient causes of planetary motion, and holding the "key to the inner astronomy."[402] What Kepler dreamed of and groped after, Newton realized. He showed the beautiful and symmetrical revolutions of the solar system to be governed by a uniformly acting cause, and that cause no other than the familiar force of gravity, which gives stability to all our terrestrial surroundings. The world under our feet was thus for the first time brought into physical connection with the worlds peopling space, and a very tangible relationship was demonstrated as existing between what used to be called the "corruptible" matter of the earth and the "incorruptible" matter of the heavens.
This process of unification of the cosmos—this levelling of the celestial with the sublunary—was carried no farther until the fact unexpectedly emerged from a vast and complicated mass of observations, that the magnetism of the earth is subject to subtle influences, emanating, certainly from some, and presumably from all of the heavenly bodies; the inference being thus rendered at least plausible, that a force not less universal than gravity itself, but with whose modes of action we are as yet unacquainted, pervades the universe, and forms, it might be said, an intangible bond of sympathy between its parts. Now for the investigation of this influence two roads are open. It may be pursued by observation either of the bodies from which it proceeds, or of the effects which it produces—that is to say, either by the astronomer or by the physicist, or, better still, by both concurrently. Their acquisitions are mutually profitable; nor can either be considered as independent of the other. Any important accession to knowledge respecting the sun, for example, may be expected to cast a reflected light on the still obscure subject of terrestrial magnetism; while discoveries in magnetism or its alter ego electricity must profoundly affect solar inquiries.
The establishment of the new method of spectrum analysis drew[Pg 142] far closer this alliance between celestial and terrestrial science. Indeed, they have come to merge so intimately one into the other, that it is no easier to trace their respective boundaries than it is to draw a clear dividing-line between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Yet up to the middle of the last century, astronomy, while maintaining her strict union with mathematics, looked with indifference on the rest of the sciences; it was enough that she possessed the telescope and the calculus. Now the materials for her inductions are supplied by the chemist, the electrician, the inquirer into the most recondite mysteries of light and the molecular constitution of matter. She is concerned with what the geologist, the meteorologist, even the biologist, has to say; she can afford to close her ears to no new truth of the physical order. Her position of lofty isolation has been exchanged for one of community and mutual aid. The astronomer has become, in the highest sense of the term, a physicist; while the physicist is bound to be something of an astronomer.
This, then, is what is designed to be conveyed by the "foundation of astronomical or cosmical physics." It means the establishment of a science of Nature whose conclusions are not only presumed by analogy, but are ascertained by observation, to be valid wherever light can travel and gravity is obeyed—a science by which the nature of the stars can be studied upon the earth, and the nature of the earth can be made better known by study of the stars—a science, in a word, which is, or aims at being, one and universal, even as Nature—the visible reflection of the invisible highest Unity—is one and universal.
It is not too much to say that a new birth of knowledge has ensued. The astronomy so signally promoted by Bessel[403]—the astronomy placed by Comte[404] at the head of the hierarchy of the physical sciences—was the science of the movements of the heavenly bodies. And there were those who began to regard it as a science which, from its very perfection, had ceased to be interesting—whose tale of discoveries was told, and whose farther advance must be in the line of minute technical improvements, not of novel and stirring disclosures. But the science of the nature of the heavenly bodies is one only in the beginning of its career. It is full of the audacities, the inconsistencies, the imperfections, the possibilities of youth. It promises everything; it has already performed much; it will doubtless perform much more. The means at its disposal are vast and are being daily augmented. What has so far been secured by them it must now be our task to extricate from more doubtful surroundings and place in due order before our readers.
FOOTNOTES:
[347] Wolf, Gesch. der Astr., p. 655.
[348] Manuel Johnson, Mem. R.A.S., vol. xxvi., p. 197.
[349] Astronomie Théorique et Pratique, t. iii., p. 20.
[350] Wolf, Gesch. der Astr., p. 654.
[351] Month. Not., vol. xvii., p. 241.
[352] Mem. R.A.S., vol. xxvi., p. 200.
[353] Astr. Nach., No. 495.
[354] Gehler's Physikalisches Wörterbuch, art. Sonnenflecken, p. 851.
[355] Zweite Abth., p. 401.
[356] Annalen der Physik (Poggendorff's), Bd. lxxxiv., p. 580.
[357] Phil. Trans., vol. cxlii., p. 103.
[358] Mittheilungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, 1852, p. 183.
[359] Archives des Sciences, t. xxi., p. 194.
[360] Neue Untersuchungen, Mitth. Naturf. Ges., 1852, p. 249.
[361] Phil. Trans., vol. xci., p. 316.
[362] Evidence of an eleven-yearly fluctuation in the price of food-grains in India was collected some years ago by Mr. Frederick Chambers. Nature, vol. xxxiv., p. 100.
[363] Bibl. Un. de Genève, t. li., p. 336.
[364] Neue Untersuchungen, p. 269.
[365] Die Sonne und ihre Flecken, p. 30. Arago was the first who attempted to decide the question by keeping, through a series of years, a parallel register of sun-spots and weather; but the data regarding the solar condition amassed at the Paris Observatory from 1822 to 1830 were not sufficiently precise to support any inference.
[366] Phil. Trans., vol. xxix., p. 421.
[367] Ibid., vols. cxliii., p. 558, cxlvi., p. 505.
[368] Observations on Light and Colours, p. 35.
[369] Phil. Trans., vol. lxxv., p. 190.
[370] Denkschriften (Munich. Ac. of Sc.), 1814, 1815, Bd. v., p. 197.
[371] Edinburgh Journal of Science, vol. v., p. 77. See also Phil. Mag., Feb., 1834, vol. iv., p. 112.
[372] Ed. Phil. Trans., vol. xxi., p. 411.
[373] On the Absorption of Light by Coloured Media, Ed. Phil. Trans., vol. ix., p. 445 (1823).
[374] Phil. Mag., vol. xxvii, (ser. iii.), p. 81.
[375] Report Brit. Ass., 1835, p. 11 (pt. ii.). Electrodes are the terminals from one to the other of which the electric spark passes, volatilising and rendering incandescent in its transit some particles of their substance, the characteristic light of which accordingly flashes out in the spectrum.
[376] Phil. Mag., vol. xx., p. 93.
[377] Annalen der Physik, Bd. cxiii., p. 357.
[378] Phil. Trans., vol. xcii., p. 378.
[379] Denkschriften, Bd. v., p. 202.
[380] Ibid., p. 220; Edin. Jour. of Science, vol. viii., p. 9.
[381] Denkschriften, Bd. v., p. 222.
[382] Arch. des Sciences, 1849, p. 43.
[383] Phil. Trans., vol. cl., p. 159, note.
[384] Ed. Phil. Trans., vol. xii., p. 528.
[385] Phil. Trans., vol. cxxvi., p. 453. "I conceive," he says, "that this result proves decisively that the sun's atmosphere has nothing to do with the production of this singular phenomenon" (p. 455). And Brewster's well-founded opinion that it had much to do with it was thereby, in fact, overthrown.
[386] Monatsberichte, Berlin, 1859, p. 664.
[387] Abhandlungen, Berlin, 1861, pp. 80, 81.
[388] Ibid., 1861, p. 77; Annalen der Physik, Bd. cxix., p. 275. A similar conclusion, reached by Balfour Stewart in 1858, for heat-rays (Ed. Phil. Trans., vol. xxii., p. 13), was, in 1860, without previous knowledge of Kirchhoff's work, extended to light (Phil. Mag., vol. xx., p. 534); but his experiments wanted the precision of those executed at Heidelburg.
[389] Miscellaneous Works, vol. i., p. 189.
[390] Ed. Phil. Trans., vol. ix., p. 458.
[391] Ibid., vol. xii., p. 519.
[392] Quart. Jour. Chem. Soc., vol. x. p. 79.
[393] A facsimile accompanied Sir H. Roscoe's translation of Kirchhoff's "Researches on the Solar Spectrum" (London, 1862-63).
[394] Estimated by Kirchhoff's at a trillion to one. Abhandl., 1861, p. 79.
[395] Phil. Mag., vol. xxvii. (3rd series), p. 90.
[396] L'Institut, Feb. 7, 1849, p. 45; Phil. Mag., vol. xix. (4th series), p. 193.
[397] Ann. d. Phys., vol. cxviii., p. 110.
[398] Phil. Mag., vol. ix. (4th series), p. 327.
[399] Spectra may be produced by diffraction as well as by refraction; but we are here only concerned with the subject in its simplest aspect.
[400] Astrologia Gallica (1661), p. 189.
[401] Pos. Phil., vol. i., pp. 114, 115 (Martineau's trans.).
[402] Proem Astronomiæ Pars Optica (1640), Op., t. ii.
[403] Pop. Vorl., pp. 14, 19, 408.
[404] Pos. Phil., p. 115.
article by Agnes Mary Clerke
from The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century
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