IS THE SUN GOING BANKRUPT?

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXL, Issue 6164, 9 January 1904, Page 7

IS THE SUN GOING BANKRUPT?

At .last the philosophical mind is questioning whether the cause of the phenomenal we* weather of the last two years may not be found in the fact that once more in the history of ciyilisation, like Prometheus of old, man lias stolen fire from the sun and is suffering in> consequence the punishment which Nature always bestows when her laws and principles are trifled "with. There . We bean thus far Im the investigation of . the subject, Bays the London Daily &£ai^.-~-threetheories for the present prolonged rCTy season—that Saturn lias entered into the region of the sign of Aquarius; that the disturbances of Mount Pelee and the other volcanoes in the West Indies have caused the present wefc weather; and that the wet season lias been caused by sunspots. The answer to these three theories is :. (1\ That! Stiturn has frequently been in the sign of Aquarius before, without-any such wet and watery results; (2) that there .have been greater volcanic disturbances' than those in the 'West Indies, without any isuch disastrous offsets; and (3) that there 'have been sunspots every eleven or thirteen years since meteorological records have been kept, bub never has there been anything comparable to these last two years of incessant rain. There remains one alarming but quite rational hypothesis for this prolonged experience of electrical and torrential storms. Wβ have drawn from the atmosphere in a prodigal manner during the last ten. years vast supplies of the electrical! fluid. In this way a vacuum has been formed in the atmosphere which surrounds the globe, and as. Nature __ abhors a vacuum, she liae drawn from the oceans of the earth new and unmeasured supplies of ozone, which have surcharged tie clouds with vapor, and have caused this phenomenal experience of the electrical rainstorms and downpour of water. And as for the huge sunspots which are visible at the present time, how do we know but that the bankrupt condition of the sun, to the immense drain upon its rays .from uie< robbery of the atmosphere of its electric fluid, may rationally account for these? At the time of the Exposition in Paris in 1889, frequent and violent thunderstorms swept over the city, but, were not experienced a litde distance in the country. _ It was afterwards affirmed that these electrical storms were caused by the great amount of iron ard electrical machinery used ab the Exposition building, co that the Eiffel Tower ' acted as a lightning-rod to induce electrical currents over the area of the Exposition. But now we have these electrical plants everywhere, and, as Mark Twain said of , t New England, "We have plenty of weather, but no climate." If we can imagine in thenext few yeara that it could be possible t« draw' the ox —en out of. the atmosphere as we have drawn ■electricity out of it, and men, women, and little .children were dying for wanti of ozone food, the Governments of the earth would appoint a commission to —.. investigate this world-wide disaster. Why can we not have a. scientific commission now to tell us what it is that ails this sick earth to-day? '