“If the sun were composed of coal, it would last at the present rate only 5,000 years. The sun, in all probability, is not a burning, but an incandescent, body. Its light is rather that of a glowing molten metal than that of a burning furnace. But it is impossible that the sun should constantly be giving out heat, without either losing heat or being supplied with new fuel. Assuming that the heat of the sun has been kept up by meteoric bodies falling into it, it is possible from the mass of the solar system to determine approximately the period during which the sun has shone. The limits lie between 100 millions and 400 millions of years.”
More gems from Scientific American’s first 175 years can be found on our anniversary archive page.
fauxcerebri on December 3rd, 2020 at 13:15 UTC »
I think a lot of really old science doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Can you imagine making these discoveries by digging through books in your attic? No electricity? Of course no phone or internet, maybe some kind of library. Mail correspondence. The fact that the great scientists discovers what they did during the enlightenment era is more impressive to me than anything.
Alimbiquated on December 3rd, 2020 at 11:26 UTC »
The problem was that nobody knew about radioactivity. Madame Curie hadn't even invented the word yet. Coal was about the densest fuel anyone knew about.
Geologists started coming up with insanely long histories base on layers of rock, but physicists thought it contradicted thermodynamics, which said the sun would have burned out and cooled off ages before the layers were finished.
For example, Lord Kelvin didn't believe in Darwinism because the time scale was just wrong.
Dvvesa on December 3rd, 2020 at 09:58 UTC »
I wonder which theories accepted today will be considered ridiculous in a hundred years.