The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CHAPTER XVIII CHEMISTRY OF THE STARS FROM a study of the electric furnace and of the curious effects which very high temperatures have on the various substances known to the chemist, it is but a short step to a consideration of the conditions which prevail on the sun and other heavenly bodies, where Nature herself has concentrated so much heat. What is the constitution of the sun and stars ? Do the elements of which they are composed differ from those with which we are familiar? How is their condition affected by the high temperatures which prevail there ? Such are some of the questions which occur to us in this connection. To these and similar inquiries the older astronomy had no reply. It displayed a marvellous power of cal- culating times and seasons, of accurately predicting the movements of the celestial army, but as to the materials of which these other worlds were built up, it had nothing to say. At one time, indeed, it looked as if astronomical science had come to the end of its tether; it had attained such a thorough mastery of the problems connected with the movements, the size, and the distances of the heavenly bodies, that no very startling advance was to be expected in that direction, and there was no hope that the con- stitution of these bodies would ever be discovered by working on the old lines. 203