Part 10

In recent times we not only observe the moon with the telescope, but get still more definite information by photography. The whole visible surface has been repeatedly photographed under the best conditions. But no change has been established beyond question, nor does the photograph show the slightest difference of structure or shade which could be attributed to cities or other works of man. To all appearances the whole surface of our satellite is as completely devoid of life as the lava newly thrown from Vesuvius. We next pass to the planets. Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is in a position very unfavorable for observation from the earth, because when nearest to us it is between us and the sun, so that its dark hemisphere is presented to us. Nothing satisfactory has yet been made out as to its condition. We cannot say with certainty whether it has an atmosphere or not. What seems very probable is that the temperature on its surface is higher than any of our earthly animals could sustain. But this proves nothing.

We know that Venus has an atmosphere. This was very conclusively shown during the transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882. But this atmosphere is so filled with clouds or vapor that it does not seem likely that we ever get a view of the solid body of the planet through it. Some observers have thought they could see spots on Venus day after day, while others have disputed this view. On the whole, if intelligent inhabitants live there, it is not likely that they ever see sun or stars. Instead of the sun they see only an effulgence in the vapory sky which disappears and reappears at regular intervals.

When we come to Mars, we have more definite knowledge, and there seems to be greater possibilities for life there than in the case of any other planet besides the earth. The main reason for denying that life such as ours could exist there is that the atmosphere of Mars is so rare that, in the light of the most recent researches, we cannot be fully assured that it exists at all. The very careful comparisons of the spectra of Mars and of the moon made by Campbell at the Lick Observatory failed to show the slightest difference in the two. If Mars had an atmosphere as dense as ours, the result could be seen in the darkening of the lines of the spectrum produced by the double passage of the light through it. There were no lines in the spectrum of Mars that were not seen with equal distinctness in that of the moon. But this does not prove the entire absence of an atmosphere. It only shows a limit to its density. It may be one-fifth or one-fourth the density of that on the earth, but probably no more.

That there must be something in the nature of vapor at least seems to be shown by the formation and disappearance of the white polar caps of this planet. Every reader of astronomy at the present time knows that, during the Martian winter, white caps form around the pole of the planet which is turned away from the sun, and grow larger and larger until the sun begins to shine upon them, when they gradually grow smaller, and perhaps nearly disappear. It seems, therefore, fairly well proved that, under the influence of cold, some white substance forms around the polar regions of Mars which evaporates under the influence of the sun's rays. It has been supposed that this substance is snow, produced in the same way that snow is produced on the earth, by the evaporation of water.

But there are difficulties in the way of this explanation. The sun sends less than half as much heat to Mars as to the earth, and it does not seem likely that the polar regions can ever receive enough of heat to melt any considerable quantity of snow. Nor does it seem likely that any clouds from which snow could fall ever obscure the surface of Mars.

But a very slight change in the explanation will make it tenable. Quite possibly the white deposits may be due to something like hoar-frost condensed from slightly moist air, without the actual production of snow. This would produce the effect that we see. Even this explanation implies that Mars has air and water, rare though the former may be. It is quite possible that air as thin as that of Mars would sustain life in some form. Life not totally unlike that on the earth may therefore exist upon this planet for anything that we know to the contrary. More than this we cannot say.

In the case of the outer planets the answer to our question must be in the negative. It now seems likely that Jupiter is a body very much like our sun, only that the dark portion is too cool to emit much, if any, light. It is doubtful whether Jupiter has anything in the nature of a solid surface. Its interior is in all likelihood a mass of molten matter far above a red heat, which is surrounded by a comparatively cool, yet, to our measure, extremely hot, vapor. The belt-like clouds which surround the planet are due to this vapor combined with the rapid rotation. If there is any solid surface below the atmosphere that we can see, it is swept by winds such that nothing we have on earth could withstand them. But, as we have said, the probabilities are very much against there being anything like such a surface. At some great depth in the fiery vapor there is a solid nucleus; that is all we can say.

The planet Saturn seems to be very much like that of Jupiter in its composition. It receives so little heat from the sun that, unless it is a mass of fiery vapor like Jupiter, the surface must be far below the freezing-point.

We cannot speak with such certainty of Uranus and Neptune; yet the probability seems to be that they are in much the same condition as Saturn. They are known to have very dense atmospheres, which are made known to us only by their absorbing some of the light of the sun. But nothing is known of the composition of these atmospheres.

To sum up our argument: the fact that, so far as we have yet been able to learn, only a very small proportion of the visible worlds scattered through space are fitted to be the abode of life does not preclude the probability that among hundreds of millions of such worlds a vast number are so fitted. Such being the case, all the analogies of nature lead us to believe that, whatever the process which led to life upon this earth--whether a special act of creative power or a gradual course of development--through that same process does life begin in every part of the universe fitted to sustain it. The course of development involves a gradual improvement in living forms, which by irregular steps rise higher and higher in the scale of being. We have every reason to believe that this is the case wherever life exists. It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated, but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in space. It would, indeed, be very inspiring could we learn by actual observation what forms of society exist throughout space, and see the members of such societies enjoying themselves by their warm firesides. But this, so far as we can now see, is entirely beyond the possible reach of our race, so long as it is confined to a single world.

VIII

HOW THE PLANETS ARE WEIGHED

You ask me how the planets are weighed? I reply, on the same principle by which a butcher weighs a ham in a spring-balance. When he picks the ham up, he feels a pull of the ham towards the earth. When he hangs it on the hook, this pull is transferred from his hand to the spring of the balance. The stronger the pull, the farther the spring is pulled down. What he reads on the scale is the strength of the pull. You know that this pull is simply the attraction of the earth on the ham. But, by a universal law of force, the ham attracts the earth exactly as much as the earth does the ham. So what the butcher really does is to find how much or how strongly the ham attracts the earth, and he calls that pull the weight of the ham. On the same principle, the astronomer finds the weight of a body by finding how strong is its attractive pull on some other body. If the butcher, with his spring-balance and a ham, could fly to all the planets, one after the other, weigh the ham on each, and come back to report the results to an astronomer, the latter could immediately compute the weight of each planet of known diameter, as compared with that of the earth. In applying this principle to the heavenly bodies, we at once meet a difficulty that looks insurmountable. You cannot get up to the heavenly bodies to do your weighing; how then will you measure their pull? I must begin the answer to this question by explaining a nice point in exact science. Astronomers distinguish between the weight of a body and its mass. The weight of objects is not the same all over the world; a thing which weighs thirty pounds in New York would weigh an ounce more than thirty pounds in a spring-balance in Greenland, and nearly an ounce less at the equator. This is because the earth is not a perfect sphere, but a little flattened. Thus weight varies with the place. If a ham weighing thirty pounds were taken up to the moon and weighed there, the pull would only be five pounds, because the moon is so much smaller and lighter than the earth. There would be another weight of the ham for the planet Mars, and yet another on the sun, where it would weigh some eight hundred pounds. Hence the astronomer does not speak of the weight of a planet, because that would depend on the place where it was weighed; but he speaks of the mass of the planet, which means how much planet there is, no matter where you might weigh it.

At the same time, we might, without any inexactness, agree that the mass of a heavenly body should be fixed by the weight it would have in New York. As we could not even imagine a planet at New York, because it may be larger than the earth itself, what we are to imagine is this: Suppose the planet could be divided into a million million million equal parts, and one of these parts brought to New York and weighed. We could easily find its weight in pounds or tons. Then multiply this weight by a million million million, and we shall have a weight of the planet. This would be what the astronomers might take as the mass of the planet.

With these explanations, let us see how the weight of the earth is found. The principle we apply is that round bodies of the same specific gravity attract small objects on their surface with a force proportional to the diameter of the attracting body. For example, a body two feet in diameter attracts twice as strongly as one of a foot, one of three feet three times as strongly, and so on. Now, our earth is about 40,000,000 feet in diameter; that is 10,000,000 times four feet. It follows that if we made a little model of the earth four feet in diameter, having the average specific gravity of the earth, it would attract a particle with one ten-millionth part of the attraction of the earth. The attraction of such a model has actually been measured. Since we do not know the average specific gravity of the earth--that being in fact what we want to find out--we take a globe of lead, four feet in diameter, let us suppose. By means of a balance of the most exquisite construction it is found that such a globe does exert a minute attraction on small bodies around it, and that this attraction is a little more than the ten-millionth part of that of the earth. This shows that the specific gravity of the lead is a little greater than that of the average of the whole earth. All the minute calculations made, it is found that the earth, in order to attract with the force it does, must be about five and one-half times as heavy as its bulk of water, or perhaps a little more. Different experimenters find different results; the best between 5.5 and 5.6, so that 5.5 is, perhaps, as near the number as we can now get. This is much more than the average specific gravity of the materials which compose that part of the earth which we can reach by digging mines. The difference arises from the fact that, at the depth of many miles, the matter composing the earth is compressed into a smaller space by the enormous weight of the portions lying above it. Thus, at the depth of 1000 miles, the pressure on every cubic inch is more than 2000 tons, a weight which would greatly condense the hardest metal.

We come now to the planets. I have said that the mass or weight of a heavenly body is determined by its attraction on some other body. There are two ways in which the attraction of a planet may be measured. One is by its attraction on the planets next to it. If these bodies did not attract one another at all, but only moved under the influence of the sun, they would move in orbits having the form of ellipses. They are found to move very nearly in such orbits, only the actual path deviates from an ellipse, now in one direction and then in another, and it slowly changes its position from year to year. These deviations are due to the pull of the other planets, and by measuring the deviations we can determine the amount of the pull, and hence the mass of the planet.

The reader will readily understand that the mathematical processes necessary to get a result in this way must be very delicate and complicated. A much simpler method can be used in the case of those planets which have satellites revolving round them, because the attraction of the planet can be determined by the motions of the satellite. The first law of motion teaches us that a body in motion, if acted on by no force, will move in a straight line. Hence, if we see a body moving in a curve, we know that it is acted on by a force in the direction towards which the motion curves. A familiar example is that of a stone thrown from the hand. If the stone were not attracted by the earth, it would go on forever in the line of throw, and leave the earth entirely. But under the attraction of the earth, it is drawn down and down, as it travels onward, until finally it reaches the ground. The faster the stone is thrown, of course, the farther it will go, and the greater will be the sweep of the curve of its path. If it were a cannon-ball, the first part of the curve would be nearly a right line. If we could fire a cannon-ball horizontally from the top of a high mountain with a velocity of five miles a second, and if it were not resisted by the air, the curvature of the path would be equal to that of the surface of our earth, and so the ball would never reach the earth, but would revolve round it like a little satellite in an orbit of its own. Could this be done, the astronomer would be able, knowing the velocity of the ball, to calculate the attraction of the earth as well as we determine it by actually observing the motion of falling bodies around us.

Thus it is that when a planet, like Mars or Jupiter, has satellites revolving round it, astronomers on the earth can observe the attraction of the planet on its satellites and thus determine its mass. The rule for doing this is very simple. The cube of the distance between the planet and satellite is divided by the square of the time of revolution of the satellite. The quotient is a number which is proportional to the mass of the planet. The rule applies to the motion of the moon round the earth and of the planets round the sun. If we divide the cube of the earth's distance from the sun, say 93,000,000 miles, by the square of 365 1/4, the days in a year, we shall get a certain quotient. Let us call this number the sun-quotient. Then, if we divide the cube of the moon's distance from the earth by the square of its time of revolution, we shall get another quotient, which we may call the earth-quotient. The sun-quotient will come out about 330,000 times as large as the earth-quotient. Hence it is concluded that the mass of the sun is 330,000 times that of the earth; that it would take this number of earths to make a body as heavy as the sun.

I give this calculation to illustrate the principle; it must not be supposed that the astronomer proceeds exactly in this way and has only this simple calculation to make. In the case of the moon and earth, the motion and distance of the former vary in consequence of the attraction of the sun, so that their actual distance apart is a changing quantity. So what the astronomer actually does is to find the attraction of the earth by observing the length of a pendulum which beats seconds in various latitudes. Then, by very delicate mathematical processes, he can find with great exactness what would be the time of revolution of a small satellite at any given distance from the earth, and thus can get the earth-quotient.

But, as I have already pointed out, we must, in the case of the planets, find the quotient in question by means of the satellites; and it happens, fortunately, that the motions of these bodies are much less changed by the attraction of the sun than is the motion of the moon. Thus, when we make the computation for the outer satellite of Mars, we find the quotient to be 1/3093500 that of the sun-quotient. Hence we conclude that the mass of Mars is 1/3093500 that of the sun. By the corresponding quotient, the mass of Jupiter is found to be about 1/1047 that of the sun, Saturn 1/3500, Uranus 1/22700, Neptune 1/19500.

We have set forth only the great principle on which the astronomer has proceeded for the purpose in question. The law of gravitation is at the bottom of all his work. The effects of this law require mathematical processes which it has taken two hundred years to bring to their present state, and which are still far from perfect. The measurement of the distance of a satellite is not a job to be done in an evening; it requires patient labor extending through months and years, and then is not as exact as the astronomer would wish. He does the best he can, and must be satisfied with that.

THE MARINER'S COMPASS

Among those provisions of Nature which seem to us as especially designed for the use of man, none is more striking than the seeming magnetism of the earth. What would our civilization have been if the mariner's compass had never been known? That Columbus could never have crossed the Atlantic is certain; in what generation since his time our continent would have been discovered is doubtful. Did the reader ever reflect what a problem the captain of the finest ocean liner of our day would face if he had to cross the ocean without this little instrument? With the aid of a pilot he gets his ship outside of Sandy Hook without much difficulty. Even later, so long as the sun is visible and the air is clear, he will have some apparatus for sailing by the direction of the sun. But after a few hours clouds cover the sky. From that moment he has not the slightest idea of east, west, north, or south, except so far as he may infer it from the direction in which he notices the wind to blow. For a few hours he may be guided by the wind, provided he is sure he is not going ashore on Long Island. Thus, in time, he feels his way out into the open sea. By day he has some idea of direction with the aid of the sun; by night, when the sky is clear he can steer by the Great Bear, or "Cynosure," the compass of his ancient predecessors on the Mediterranean. But when it is cloudy, if he persists in steaming ahead, he may be running towards the Azores or towards Greenland, or he may be making his way back to New York without knowing it. So, keeping up steam only when sun or star is visible, he at length finds that he is approaching the coast of Ireland. Then he has to grope along much like a blind man with his staff, feeling his way along the edge of a precipice. He can determine the latitude at noon if the sky is clear, and his longitude in the morning or evening in the same conditions. In this way he will get a general idea of his whereabouts. But if he ventures to make headway in a fog, he may find himself on the rocks at any moment. He reaches his haven only after many spells of patient waiting for favoring skies.

The fact that the earth acts like a magnet, that the needle points to the north, has been generally known to navigators for nearly a thousand years, and is said to have been known to the Chinese at a yet earlier period. And yet, to-day, if any professor of physical science is asked to explain the magnetic property of the earth, he will acknowledge his inability to do so to his own satisfaction. Happily this does not hinder us from finding out by what law these forces act, and how they enable us to navigate the ocean. I therefore hope the reader will be interested in a short exposition of the very curious and interesting laws on which the science of magnetism is based, and which are applied in the use of the compass.

The force known as magnetic, on which the compass depends, is different from all other natural forces with which we are familiar. It is very remarkable that iron is the only substance which can become magnetic in any considerable degree. Nickel and one or two other metals have the same property, but in a very slight degree. It is also remarkable that, however powerfully a bar of steel may be magnetized, not the slightest effect of the magnetism can be seen by its action on other than magnetic substances. It is no heavier than before. Its magnetism does not produce the slightest influence upon the human body. No one would know that it was magnetic until something containing iron was brought into its immediate neighborhood; then the attraction is set up. The most important principle of magnetic science is that there are two opposite kinds of magnetism, which are, in a certain sense, contrary in their manifestations. The difference is seen in the behavior of the magnet itself. One particular end points north, and the other end south. What is it that distinguishes these two ends? The answer is that one end has what we call north magnetism, while the other has south magnetism. Every magnetic bar has two poles, one near one end, one near the other. The north pole is drawn towards the north pole of the earth, the south pole towards the south pole, and thus it is that the direction of the magnet is determined. Now, when we bring two magnets near each other we find another curious phenomenon. If the two like poles are brought together, they do not attract but repel each other. But the two opposite poles attract each other. The attraction and repulsion are exactly equal under the same conditions. There is no more attraction than repulsion. If we seal one magnet up in a paper or a box, and then suspend another over the box, the north pole of the one outside will tend to the south pole of the one in the box, and vice versa.

Our next discovery is, that whenever a magnet attracts a piece of iron it makes that iron into a magnet, at least for the time being. In the case of ordinary soft or untempered iron the magnetism disappears instantly when the magnet is removed. But if the magnet be made to attract a piece of hardened steel, the latter will retain the magnetism produced in it and become itself a permanent magnet.

This fact must have been known from the time that the compass came into use. To make this instrument it was necessary to magnetize a small bar or needle by passing a natural magnet over it.

In our times the magnetization is effected by an electric current. The latter has curious magnetic properties; a magnetic needle brought alongside of it will be found placing itself at right angles to the wire bearing the current. On this principle is made the galvanometer for measuring the intensity of a current. Moreover, if a piece of wire is coiled round a bar of steel, and a powerful electric current pass through the coil, the bar will become a magnet.