Joseph Norman Lockyer

“ Is a temperature higher than any yet applied to act in the same way as each higher temperature, which has been applied, has done? Or is there to be some unexplained break in the uniformity of nature's processes? ”

“ Huggins's photographs have demonstrated the same fact for the stars, so that in the present state of our knowledge, independent of all hypotheses, the facts may be represented as follows:
I have no hesitation in stating my opinion that in this line of facts we have the most important outcome of solar work during the last ten years; and if there were none others in support of them, the conclusion would still stare us in the face that the running down of temperature in a mass of matter which is eventually to form a star is accompanied by a gradually increasing complexity of chemical forms. ”

“ The spectroscope, however simple or complex it may be, is an instrument which allows us to observe the image of the slit through which the light enters it, in the most perfect manner. If the light contains rays of every wave-length, then the images formed by each will be so close together that the spectrum will be continuous, that is, without break. If the light contains only certain wave-lengths, then we shall get certain, and not all, of the possible images of the slit, and the spectrum will be discontinuous. ”

“ In dwelling upon sound-phenomena, we have the advantage of dealing with phenomena about which Science says she does know something: from a consideration of these known facts we shall be able, slowly but surely, to grasp some of the much less familiar phenomena with which spectrum analysis is especially concerned. ”

“ Time out of mind—or, rather, ever since Nicolas Le Fèvre, who was sent over here by the French King at the request of our English one at the time the Royal Society was established, pointed out that chemistry was the art of separations as well as of transmutations—it has been recognized that, with every increase of temperature, or dissociating power, bodies were separated from each other. ”

“ If the piano-wire only gives the same sound when struck either hard or soft, it is because it is manufactured to do one particular kind of work, and it can do no other.
Now we may pass from a piano-wire to a tuning-fork. We find that, by using different quantities or different shapes of metal, these instruments give out different notes. If all be of the same metal, the different quantities of metal will give us a difference in the pitch. This demonstrates that the pitch of a note is independent of any particular quality of the substance set into vibration. ”

“ In all this work they have taken for granted that in the spectrum thus produced in their laboratories, they have been dealing with the vibration of one unique thing, call it atom, molecule, or what you will; that one unique thing has by its vibrations produced all the lines visible, which they have persistently seen and mapped in each instance. ”

“ We are yet as far as ever from a demonstration of the cause of the variation in the temperature of the sun; but the excess of so-called calcium with minimum sun-spots, and excess of so-called hydrogen with maximum sun-spots, follow naturally from the hypothesis, and afford indications that the temperature of the hottest region in the sun closely approximates to that of the reversing layer in stars of the type of Sirius and a Lyræ. ”

“ A compound body, such as a salt of calcium, has as definite a spectrum as that given by the so-called elements; but while the spectrum of the metallic element itself consists of lines, the number and thickness of some of which increase with increased quantity, the spectrum of the compound consists in the main of channeled spaces and bands, which increase in like manner.
In short, the molecules of a simple body and a compound one are affected in the same manner by quantity in so far as their spectra are concerned ”

“ I HAVE recently announced to the Royal Society that, reasoning from the phenomena presented to us in the spectroscope when known compounds are decomposed, I have obtained evidence that the so-called elementary bodies are in reality compound ones. ”

“ J'ai pensé que nous pouvions imaginer une "dissociation céleste," qui continue le travail de nos fourneaux, et que le métalloïdes sont des composés qui sont dissociés par la température solaire, pendant que les éléments métalliques monatomiques, dont les poids atomiques sont les moindres, sont précisément ceux qui resistent même à la température des étoiles les plus chaudes. Before I proceed further I should state that, while observations of the sun have since shown that calcium should be introduced between hydrogen and magnesium for that luminary, Dr. ”

“ We have first the brightest and presumably hottest stars, and of these the spectrum is marvelously simple—so simple, in fact, that we say their atmospheres consist in the main of only two substances—a statement founded on the observation that the lines in the spectra are matched by lines which we see in the spectra of hydrogen and calcium ”

“ We have a state of things passing from the sender of the sound to the receiver; the medium through which the sound passes being the air. A sounding body in the middle of a room, for instance, must send out shells of sound as it were, in all directions, because people above, below, and all round it, would hear the sound. ”

“ Although the announcement took this form, the interest taken in science nowadays by the general public is so great that it is apt to travel beyond the record; and, as able editors are not content to wait for what the experimentalist himself has to say, they are often at the mercy of those who, perhaps more from misapprehension than anything else, are prepared to provide columns filled with statements wide of the mark. ”

“ The idea of simplifying the elements is connected with the philosopher's stone. The use of the philosopher's stone was to transmute metals; therefore I have been supposed to be "transmuting" metals; and imaginations have been so active in this direction that I am not sure that, when my paper was eventually read at the Royal Society, many were not disappointed that I did not incontinently then and there "transmute" a ton of lead into a ton of gold. ”

“ In this way the spectrum of each substance furnishes us with long and short lines, the long lines being common to the more and less intensely heated parts of the arc, and the short lines special to the more heated one. ”

“ Each particle merely moves a little right and left, and always comes back again to its starting-point; but the condensations and rarefactions, represented by the lines being respectively closer together or farther apart, are gradually transmitted through the whole series of air-particles from one end to the other. ”

“ Des étoiles plus froides encore, dans lesquelles tous les éléments métalliques sont associés, où leurs lignes ne sont plus visibles, et où nous n'avons que les spectres des métalloïdes et des composés.
4. Plus une étoile est âgée, plus l'hydrogène libte disparaît; sur la terre, nous ne trouvons plus d'hydrogène en liberté. ”

“ They have been used in an attempt to enable us to produce a spectrum of a substance free from lines due to the impurities which are almost always present.
(2) They have been used to indicate the existence and amount of dissociation when acknowledged compounds have been submitted to the action of different and increasing temperatures. ”

“ If, now, the slit be placed over the dotted line" (at the bottom of Fig. 8) , "and the book drawn along underneath it in the direction of the arrow, a representation is obtained of the motion of a series of particles of air which are acted on by a number of successive equal undulations or waves. ”

“ H Hydrogen, Ca Calcium, Mg Magnesium, Na Sodium, Fe Iron, Bi Bismuth, Hg Mercury. ↑ In the case of zinc the effect of these circumstances was very marked, and they may be given as a sample of the phenomena generally observed. When the pressure-gauge connected with a Sprengel pump stood at from 35 to 40 millimetres, the spectrum at the part observed was normal, except that the two lines 4924 and 4911 (both of which, when the spectrum is observed under the normal pressure, are lines with thick wings) were considerably reduced in width. ”