HOW THE SUN’S HEAT IS MAINTAINED

The Earth's Beginning by Robert S. Ball is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. HOW THE SUN’S HEAT IS MAINTAINED

CHAPTER VI. HOW THE SUN’S HEAT IS MAINTAINED

The Contraction of a Body—Helmholtz Explained Sun-heat—Change of a Mile every Eleven Years in the Sun’s Diameter—Effect of Contraction on Temperature—The Solar Constant—Limits to the Solar Shrinkage—Astronomers can Weigh the Sun—Density of the Sun—Heat Developed by the Falling Together of the Solar Materials—Contraction of Nebula to Form the Earth—Heat Produced in the Earth’s Contraction—Similar Calculation about the Sun—Earth and Sun Contrasted—Heat Produced in the Solar Contraction from an indefinitely Great Nebula—The Coal-Unit Employed—Calculation of the Heat given out by the Sun.

The law which declares that a body which gives out heat must in general submit to a corresponding diminution in volume appears, so far as we can judge, to be one of those laws which have to be obeyed not alone by bodies on which we can experiment, but by bodies throughout the extent of the universe. The law which bids the mercury ascend the stem of the thermometer when the temperature rises, and descend when the temperature falls, affords the principle which explains some of the grandest phenomena of the heavens. Applied to the solar system it declares that as the sun, in dispensing its benefits to the earth day by day, has to pour forth heat, so in like manner must it be diminishing in bulk.

Assuming that this principle extends sufficiently widely through time and space, we shall venture to apply its consequences over the mighty spaces and periods required for celestial evolution. We disdain to notice the paltry centuries or mere thousands of years which include that infinitesimal trifle known as human history. Our time conceptions must undergo a vast extension.

It was Helmholtz who first explained by what agency the sun is able to continue its wonderful radiation of heat, notwithstanding that it receives no appreciable aid from chemical combination. Helmholtz pointed out that inasmuch as the sun is pouring out heat it must, like every other cooling body, contract. We ought not, indeed, to say every cooling body; it would be more correct to say, every body which is giving out heat, for the two things are not necessarily the same. Indeed, strange as it may appear, it would be quite possible that a mass of gas should be gaining in temperature even though it were losing heat all the time. At first this seems a paradox, but the paradox will be explained if we reflect upon the physical changes which the gas undergoes in consequence of its contraction.

Let us dwell for a moment on the remarkable statement that the sun is becoming gradually smaller. The reduction required to sustain the radiation corresponds to a diminution of the diameter by about a mile every eleven years. It may serve to impress upon us the fact of the sun’s shrinkage if we will remember that on that auspicious day when Queen Victoria came to the 97throne the sun had a diameter more than five miles greater than it had at the time when her long and glorious career was ended. The sun that shone on Palestine at the beginning of the present era must have had a diameter about one hundred and seventy miles greater than the sun which now shines on the Sea of Galilee. This process of reduction has been going on for ages, which from the human point of view we may practically describe as illimitable. The alteration in the sun’s diameter within the period covered by the records of man’s sway on this earth may be intrinsically large; it amounts no doubt to several hundreds of miles. But in comparison with the vast bulk of the sun this change in its magnitude is unimportant. A span of ten thousand years will certainly include all human history. Let us take a period which is four times as long. It is easy to calculate what the diameter of the sun must have been forty thousand years ago, or what the diameter of the sun is to become in the next forty thousand years. Calculated at the rate we have given, the alteration in the sun’s diameter in this period amounts to rather less than four thousand miles. This seems no doubt a huge alteration in the dimensions of the orb of day. We must, however, remember that at the present moment the diameter of the sun is about 863,000 miles, and that a loss of four thousand miles, or thereabouts, would still leave a sun with a diameter of 859,000 miles. There would not be much recognisable difference between two suns of these different dimensions. I think I may say that if we could imagine two suns in the sky at the same moment, which differed only in the circumstance that one had a diameter 98of 863,000 miles and the other a diameter of 859,000 miles, it would not be possible without careful telescopic measurement to tell which of the two was the larger.

After a contraction has taken place by loss of heat, the heat that still remains in the body is contained within a smaller volume than it had originally. The temperature depends not only on the actual quantity of heat that the mass of gas contains, but also on the volume through which that quantity of heat is diffused. If there be two equal weights of gas, and if they each have the same absolute quantity of heat, but if one of them occupies a larger volume than the other, then the temperature of the gas in the large volume will not be so high as the temperature of the gas in the smaller volume. This is indeed so much the case, that the reduction of volume by the loss of heat may sometimes have a greater effect in raising the temperature than the very loss of heat which produced the contraction has in depressing it. On the whole, therefore, a gain of temperature may be shown. This is what, indeed, happens not unfrequently in celestial bodies. The contraction having taken place, the lesser quantity of heat still shows to such advantage in the reduced volume of the body, that no decline of temperature will be perceptible. It may happen that simultaneously with the decrease of heat there is even an increase of temperature.

The principle under consideration shows that, though the sun is now giving out heat copiously, it does not necessarily follow that it must at the same time be sinking in temperature. As a matter of fact, physicists do not know what course the temperature 99of the sun is actually taking at this moment. The sun may now be precisely at the same temperature at which it stood a thousand years ago, or it may be cooler, or it may be hotter. In any case it is certain that the change of temperature per century is small, too small, in fact, to be decided in the present state of our knowledge. We cannot observe any change, and to estimate the change from mechanical principles would only be possible if we knew much more about the interior of the sun than we know at present.

We are forced to the conclusion that the energy of the sun, by which we mean either its actual heat or what is equivalent to heat, must be continually wasting. A thousand years ago there was more heat, or its equivalent, in the sun than there is at present. But the sun of a thousand years ago was larger than the sun that we now have, and the heat, or its equivalent, a thousand years ago may not have been so effective in sustaining the temperature of the bigger sun as the lesser quantity of heat is in sustaining the temperature of the sun at the present day. It will be noticed that the argument depends essentially on the alteration of the size of the sun. Of course if the orb of day had been no greater a thousand years ago than it is now, then the sun of those early days would not only have contained more heat than our present sun, but it must have shown that it did contain more heat. In other words, its temperature would then certainly have been greater than it is at present.

Thus we see the importance—so far as radiation is concerned—of the gradual shrinking of the sun. The great orb of day decreases, and its decrease has been estimated numerically. We cannot, indeed, determine the rate of decrease by actual telescopic measurement of the sun’s disc with the micrometer; observations extending over a period of thousands of years would be required for this purpose. But from knowing the daily expenditure of heat from the sun it is possible to calculate the amount by which it shrinks. We cannot conveniently explain the matter fully in these pages. Those who desire to see the calculation will find it in the Appendix. Suffice it to say here that the sun’s diameter diminishes about sixteen inches in every twenty-four hours. This is an important conclusion, for the rate of contraction of the solar diameter is one of the most significant magnitudes relating to the solar system.

It was Helmholtz who showed that the contraction of the sun’s diameter by sixteen inches a day is sufficient to account for the sustentation of the solar radiation. For immense periods of time the heat may be dispensed with practically unaltered liberality. The question then arises as to what time-limit may be assigned to the efficiency of our orb. Obviously the sun cannot go on contracting sixteen inches a day indefinitely. If that were the case, a certain number of millions of years would see it vanish altogether. The limit to the capacity of the sun to act as a dispenser of light and heat can be easily indicated. At present the sun, in its outer parts at all events, is strictly a vaporous body. The telescope shows us nothing resembling a solid or a liquid globe. The sun seems composed of gas in which clouds and vapours are suspended. In the sun’s centre the temperature is probably very much greater than any temperature which can be produced by artificial means; it would doubtless be sufficient not only to melt, but even to drive into vapour the most refractory materials. On the other hand, the enormous condensing pressure to which those materials are submitted by the stupendous mass of the sun will have the effect of keeping them together and of compressing them to such an extent that the density of the gas, if indeed we may call it gas, is probably as great as the density of any known matter. The fact is that the terms liquids, gases, and solids cease to retain intelligible distinctions when applied to materials under such pressure as would be found in the interior of the sun.

Astronomers can weigh the sun. It may well be imagined that this is a delicate and difficult operation. It can, however, be effected with but little margin of uncertainty, and the result is a striking one. It serves no useful purpose to express the sun’s weight as so many myriads of tons. It is more useful for our present purpose to set down the density of the sun, that is to say, the ratio of the weight of the orb, to that of a globe of water of the same size. This is the useful form in which to consider the weight of the sun. Astronomers are accustomed to think of the weight of our own earth in this same fashion, and the result shows that the earth is rather more than five times as heavy as a globe of water of the same size. We can best appreciate this by stating that if the earth were made of granite, and had throughout the density which we find granite to possess at the surface, our globe would be about three times as heavy as a globe of water of the same size. If, however, the earth had been entirely made of iron, it would be more than seven times as heavy as a globe of water of the same size. As the earth actually has a density of 5, it follows that our globe taken as a whole is heavier than a globe of granite of the same size, though not so heavy as a globe of iron.

In the matter of density there is a remarkable contrast between the sun and the earth. The sun’s density is much less than that of the earth. Of course it will be understood that the sun is actually very much heavier than our globe; it is indeed more than three hundred thousand times greater in weight. But the sun is about a million three hundred thousand times as big as the earth, and it follows from these figures that its density cannot be more than about a fourth of that of the earth. The result is that, at present, the sun is nearly half as heavy again as a globe of water the same size. We have used round numbers: the density of the sun is actually 1.4.

Fig. 17.—Argo and the Surrounding Stars and Nebulosity.
(Photographed by Sir David Gill, K.C.B.)

In the following manner we explain how heat is evolved in the contraction of the sun. In its early days the sun, or rather the materials which in their aggregate form now constitute the sun, were spread over an immense tract of space, millions of times greater than the present bulk of the sun. We see nebulosities even now in the heavens which may suggest what the primæval nebula may have been before the evolution had made much progress. Look for instance at Sir David Gill’s photograph of the Nebula in Argo in Fig. 17, or at the Trifid Nebula in Fig. 18. We may, indeed, consider the primæval nebula to have been so vast that particles from the outside falling into the position of the present solar surface would acquire that velocity of three hundred and ninety miles a second which we know the attraction of the sun is capable of producing on an object which has fallen in from an indefinitely great distance. As these parts are gradually falling together at the centre, there will be an enormous quantity of heat developed from their concurrence. Supposing, for instance, that the materials of the sun were arranged in concentric spherical shells around the centre, and imagining these shells to be separated by long intervals, so that the whole material of the sun would be thus diffused over a vast extent, then every pound weight in the outermost shell, by the very fact of its sinking downwards to the present solar system, would acquire a speed of 390 miles a second, and this corresponds to as much energy as could be produced by the burning of three tons of coal. But be the fall ever so gentle, the great law of the conservation of energy tells us that for the same descent, however performed, the same quantity of heat must be given out. Each pound in the outer shell would therefore give out as much heat as three tons of coal. Every pound in the other shells, by gradual descent into the interior, would also render its corresponding contribution. It then becomes easily intelligible how, in consequence of the original diffusion of the materials of the sun over millions of times its present volume, a vast quantity of energy was available. As the sun contracted this energy was turned into radiant heat.

We may anticipate a future chapter so far as to assume that there was a time when even this solid earth of ours was a nebulous mass diffused through space. We are not concerned as to what the temperature of that nebulous mass may have been. We may suppose it to be any temperature we please. The point that we have now to consider is the quantity of heat which is generated by the contraction of the nebula. That heat is produced in the contraction will be plain from what has gone before. But we may also demonstrate it in a slightly different way. Let us take any two points in the nebula, P and Q. After the nebula has contracted the points which were originally at P and Q will be found at two other points, A and B. As the whole nebula in its original form was larger than the nebula after it has undergone its contraction, the distance P Q is generally greater than the distance A B. We may suppose the contraction to proceed uniformly, so that the same will be true of the distance between any other two particles. The distance between every pair of particles in the contracted nebula will be less than the distance between the same particles in the original nebula.

Fig. 18.—Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius (Lick Observatory, California).
(From the Royal Astronomical Society Series.)

If two attracting bodies, A and B, are to be moved further apart than they were originally, force must be applied and work must be done. We may measure the amount of that work in foot-pounds, and then, remembering that 772 foot-pounds of work are equivalent to the unit of heat, we may express the energy necessary to force the two particles to a greater distance asunder in the equivalent quantity of heat. If, therefore, we had to restore the nebula from the contracted state to the original state, this would involve a forcible enlargement of the distance A B between every two particles to its original value, P Q. Work would be required to do this in every case, and that work might, as we have explained, be expressed in terms of its equivalent heat value. Even though the temperature of the nebula is the same in its contracted state as in its original state, we see that a quantity of heat might be absorbed or rendered latent in forcing the nebula from one condition to the other. In other words, keeping the temperature of the nebula always constant, we should have to apply a large quantity of heat to change the nebula from its contracted form to its expanded form.

It is equally true that when the nebula is contracting, and when the distance between every two particles is lessening, the nebula must be giving out energy, because the total energy in the contracted state is less than it was in the expanded state. This energy is equivalent to heat. We need not here pause to consider by what actual process the heat is manifested; it suffices to say that the heat must, by one of the general laws of Nature, be produced in some form.

We are now able to make a numerical estimate. We shall suppose that the earth, or rather the materials which make the earth, existed originally as a large nebula distributed through illimitable space. The calculations show that the quantity of heat, generated by the condensation of those materials from their nebulous form into the condition which the earth now has, was enormously great. We need not express this quantity of heat in ordinary units. The unit we shall take is one more suited to the other dimensions involved. Let us suppose a globe of water as heavy as the earth. This globe would have to be five or six times as large as the earth. Next let us realise the quantity of heat that would be required to raise that globe of water from freezing point to boiling point. It can be proved that the heat, or its equivalent, which would be generated merely by the contraction of the nebula to form the earth, would be ninety times as great as the amount of heat which would suffice to raise a mass of water equal in weight to the earth from freezing point to boiling point.

We apply similar calculations to the case of the sun. Let us suppose that the great luminary was once diffused as a nebula over an exceedingly great area of space. It might at first be thought that the figures we have just given would answer the question. We might perhaps conjecture that the quantity of heat would be such as would raise a mass of water equal to the sun’s mass from freezing to boiling point ninety times over. But we should be very wrong in such a determination. The heat that is given out by the sun’s contraction is enormously greater than this estimate would represent, and we shall be prepared to admit this if we reflect on the following circumstances. A stone falling from an indefinitely great distance to the sun would acquire a speed of 390 miles a second by the time it reached the sun’s surface. A stone falling from an indefinitely great distance in space to the earth’s surface would, however, acquire a speed of not more than seven miles a second. The speed acquired by a body falling into the sun by the gravitation of the sun is, therefore, fifty-six times as great as the speed acquired by a body falling from infinity to the earth by the gravitation of the earth. As the energy of a moving body is proportional to the square of its velocity, we see that the energy with which the falling body would strike the sun, and the heat that it might consequently give forth, would be about three thousand times as great as the heat which would be the result of the fall of that body to the earth. We need not therefore be surprised that the drawing together of the elements to form the sun should be accompanied by the evolution of a quantity of heat which is enormously greater than the mere ratio of the masses of the earth and sun would have suggested.

There is another line of reasoning by which we may also illustrate the same important principle. Owing to the immense attraction possessed by the large mass of the sun, the weights of objects on that luminary would be very much greater than the weights of corresponding objects here. Indeed, a pound on the sun would be found by a spring-balance to weigh as much as twenty-seven pounds here. If the materials of the sun had to be distributed through space, each pound lifted a foot would require twenty-seven times the amount of work which would be necessary to lift a pound through a foot on the earth’s surface. It will thus be seen that not only the quantity of material that would have to be displaced is enormously greater in the sun than in the earth, but that the actual energy that would have to be applied per unit of mass from the sun would be many times as great as the quantity of energy that would have to be applied per unit of mass from the earth to effect a displacement through the same distance. To distribute the sun’s materials into a nebula we should therefore require the expenditure of a quantity of work far more than proportional to the mere mass of the sun. It follows that when the sun is contracting the quantity of work that it will give out, or, what comes to the same thing, the amount of heat that would be poured forth in consequence of the contraction per unit of mass of the sun will largely exceed the quantity of heat given out in the similar contraction of the earth per unit of mass of the earth.

These considerations will prepare us to accept the result given by accurate calculation. It has been shown that the heat which would be generated by the condensation of the sun from a nebula filling all space down to its present bulk is two hundred and seventy thousand times the amount of heat which would be required to raise the temperature of a mass of water equal to the sun from freezing point to boiling point.

This is a result of a most instructive character. The amount of heat that would be required to raise a pound of water from freezing point to boiling point would, speaking generally, be quite enough if applied to a pound of stone or iron to raise either of these masses to a red heat. If, therefore, we think of the sun as a mighty globe of stone or iron, the amount of heat that would be produced by the contraction of the sun from the primæval nebula would suffice to raise that globe of stone or iron from freezing point up to a red heat 270,000 times. This will give us some idea of the stupendous amount of heat which has been placed at the disposal of the solar system by the process of contraction of the sun. This contraction is still going on, and consequently the yield of heat which is the consequence of this contraction is still in progress, and the heat given out provides the annual supply necessary for the sustenance of our solar system.

There is one point which should be specially mentioned in connection with this argument. We have here supposed that the current supply of radiant heat from the sun is entirely in virtue of the sun’s contraction. That is to say, we suppose the sun’s temperature to be remaining unaltered. This is perhaps not strictly the case. There may be reason for believing that the temperature of the sun is increasing, though not to an appreciable extent.

It will be convenient to introduce a unit that will be on a scale adapted to our measurements. Let us think of a globe of coal as heavy as the sun. Now suppose adequate oxygen were supplied to burn that coal, a definite quantity of heat would be produced. There is no present necessity to evaluate this in the lesser units adapted for other purposes. In discussing the heat of the sun, we may use what we call the coal-unit, by which is to be understood the total quantity of heat that would be produced if a mass of coal equal to the sun in weight were burned in oxygen. It can be shown by calculations, which will be found in the Appendix, that in the shrinkage of the sun from an infinitely great extension through space down to its present bulk the contraction would develop the stupendous quantity of heat represented by 3,400 coal-units. It is also shown that one coal unit would be adequate to supply the sun’s radiation at its present rate for 2,800 years.

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