HEARTBEATS ACROSS SPACE
ACROSS 92 million miles of space the magnetic pulses of the solar heart
are transmitted to the earth, and they make the small and light compass
needle, ever trembling and seeking its pole, vibrate on its pivot.
This magnetic needle does not remain fixed in the magnetic meridian,
but oscillates every day to the right and left of the line, i.e. to
the east and west. The greatest deviation is produced at about 8 a.m.
The needle stops and returns to the magnetic meridian of the time (it
varies from year to year), crosses it a little after 10 a.m., and
continues to deviate towards the west, reaching its greatest deviation
about 1.15 p.m. It then returns to the meridian, which it reaches about
6 p.m. and crosses to the east. It moves very slowly, with a slight
oscillation between 8 and 10 p.m. to the east, attaining at 8 a.m. the
greatest easterly deviation with which we began.
Such is the daily oscillation of the needle, a process expressive of
the unknown and mysterious vital current which traverses our planet and
manifests, so to speak, the soul of the earth.
This phenomenon is absolutely general and is observed on the entire
globe, from the equator to the poles, in the same manner; the amplitude
of the oscillation increases with the latitude but not proportionately;
it only amounts to 1 or 2 minutes of arc in the tropics, to 9 minutes
in France, and 7 minutes in Norway. This variation corresponds sensibly
to the variation of temperature, the amplitude of which increases
from the tropics to the poles. Heat, electricity, water-vapour, and
barometric pressure are all associated with it.
There are certain perturbations, to be mentioned presently, to which
some human beings are sometimes a little too sensive. We live enveloped
in an invisible world.
The amplitude of this daily oscillation varies from day to day,
from month to month, from year to year. If we take the mean of the
observations of a whole year, we find that from one year to another
it changes from a certain amount to double that amount and that this
annual variation is regulated by a law. It is periodic, and the average
period is eleven or twelve years.
For instance, in 1870 the oscillation was twelve minutes of arc and in
1878 it was six minutes. I take the figures for London, Prague, Munich,
Rome, and Milan--not those for France, for no observations were made in
that terrible year, or they were made badly, and I made many enemies
by insisting upon them.
That year, 1870, was a maximum. There were other maxima, but not quite
so great, in 1883, 1893, 1905, and in 1916. The cycle varies from ten
to thirteen years.
Now, this behaviour of the magnetic needle corresponds exactly to the
state of health of the Sun, i.e. its activity or the number of sunspots
or whirlpools which indicate it as well as its gigantic flames,
protuberances, faculæ, and the various manifestations of its radiating
power.
There was a very considerable maximum of sunspots in 1870. Another
maximum occurred in 1883 and another in 1905, but the latter were less
marked than that of 1870. In 1918 another very well defined maximum
occurred.
Minima of sunspots, protuberances, and faculæ were observed in 1878,
1889, 1901, and 1913. Now, these maxima and minima correspond exactly
with the variation of the compass needle, as is shown in the tables and
curves published in my _Astronomie Populaire_.
If curves are traced for solar activity on the one hand and magnetic
oscillation on the other hand, it is found that the two curves are
absolutely parallel. Science has been able to trace this parallelism
very far, as far back indeed as the eighteenth century, and it is
found to include the aurora borealis, which is a magnetic phenomenon.
The concordance is evident and absolutely incontestable.
Thus there constantly emanates from the Sun a force different from
light and heat, a force we do not perceive with our senses and which
places our small and mobile planet in constant communication with our
central star, which is more than a million times greater in volume.
The Sun sometimes experiences violent expansions, perturbations,
tempests, and magnetic storms. The smallest disturbances which happen
in our formidable star are transmitted to us.
For instance: the years 1904 to 1908 were very strange so far as the
Sun was concerned. Instead of the single maximum which is usually
observed, there were two maxima, one in 1905 and another in 1907, 1906
being less active. The curve traced to represent the number of sunspots
shows two peaks, in 1905 and 1907 respectively, with a depression in
1906. It is the same with terrestrial magnetism: maxima in 1905 and
1907, with a slight weakening in 1906.
When I discovered this unexpected coincidence for 1906, several
sceptics were greatly surprised. Yet it is true.
It was the same when I accused the Sun of being the author of the
interruption of telephonic and telegraphic communication on September
25, 1909, which took place over the whole of France, in all Europe,
and throughout the world. The telephone girls were unjustly blamed and
the telegraph engineers were equally innocent. Why had no newspaper
thought of it? Perhaps because politics are cultivated more than
science in the papers of our unbalanced days. I do not accuse our
country more than another, the English, German, American, Australian,
and other editors having been equally astray concerning the cause of
the perturbation.
On that day the intensity of the earth-currents which produced the
breakdown was 50 million amperes, whereas the instruments work
regularly with 10 to 12 milliamperes. The whole terrestrial globe
had been plunged into a magnetic field of great intensity, into a
veritable dynamic ocean originating in a solar torrent. A large group
of sunspots surrounded by faculæ had arrived on the eastern limb of
the solar globe on September 17, and had gradually advanced towards
the central meridian of the solar hemisphere turned towards us by
the Sun’s rotation. On the 19th, this group had become much larger.
The spectroscope had indicated violent eruptions. The enormous group
of sunspots was visible to the naked eye and numerous photographs of
it had been taken at the Juvisy Observatory. It passed the central
meridian of the Sun on the morning of September 24 and continued its
course towards the western limb, disappearing from sight on October
1. The magnetic perturbation which struck our planet arrived 30 hours
after the passage of this group of sunspots across the central meridian
of the solar hemisphere facing us.
We had already, on October 31, 1903, observed a similar cosmic
phenomenon, and previously on November 18, 1882, and August 3, 1872.
Even before that date a similar event took place on September 1,
1859. But memory is short, and in any case astronomical ignorance is
universal.
The magnetic link, invisible but powerful, joins our Earth to the
central body of the solar system. Pœebus Apollo holds us in the hollow
of his hand at a distance of 92 million miles, and we feel his pulse
as he feels our feeble heart-beats. It is not only gravitation, nor
only light, nor yet only heat, which throws a celestial bridge from
the Sun to the Earth; it is also electricity; it is also magnetism;
it is a force still unknown and unexplained which no doubt maintains
communication between all the worlds. For the ethereal wave touches
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune as it
touches us, and if we could utilise it we could communicate with our
neighbours in the heavens.
Interstellar magnetism! At each stage in the advance of science new
horizons open out, unexpected perspectives reveal themselves, enlarging
the field of our conquest over nature, but what we do know already is
a mere nothing in comparison with what we are yet to know.
What is the nature of the wave or substance which leaves the Sun and
reaches the Earth to produce those agitations of the magnetic needle,
those magnetic storms and auroræ boreales?
Contemporary physics has been busy for twenty years about ions,
electrons, and electric particles. The great perturbations described
above are supposed to be due to the arrival in the upper atmosphere
of torrents of electrons projected by the Sun and impinging upon the
Earth with a speed of several thousand miles per second. The phenomenon
is most intense when these emanations from the day-star hit the Earth
directly. When they pass on one side, nothing out of the way happens.
It may be that the torrent projected in a certain direction by the Sun
on September 24 filled space in the direction of projection, and that
our globe, travelling along its orbit at 67,000 miles an hour, only
passed through that region on the following day.
Ions and electrons, those convenient goblins of present-day physics, do
they exist? Nobody has ever seen them. Perhaps they are only ingenious
interpretations. What does certainly exist is electric force. We may
also think of the repelling force exerted by the Sun, which blows
so strongly upon the nuclei of comets and produces tails several
million miles long and always in the direction opposed to the Sun.
Electricity plays a great part in the appearance, the illumination,
and the dislocation of comets’ tails, as we see nearly every year in
the photographs taken at the Juvisy Observatory and which make such
picturesque and suggestive revelations (it even plays a part in organic
cells and among microbes).
Whatever may be the real nature of the force in action, it is certain
that the magnetic link differs from universal gravitation, but it is no
less intimate and all-pervading. The twin forces of gravitational and
magnetic attraction between worlds can only be likened to the universal
force of love, which attracts souls towards each other.
VIII. IDEAS CONCERNING
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN
THE WORLDS