Earth current

“ Potential Gradient.—In dry weather the electric potential in the atmosphere is normally positive relative to the earth, and increases with the height. The existence of earth currents (q.v.) shows that the earth, strictly speaking, is not all at one potential, but the natural differences of potential between points on the earth’s surface a mile apart are insignificant compared to the normal potential difference between the earth and a point one foot above it. ”

“ Men will, however, yet obtain motion of molecules (heat) , and material mass motion as well, from earth motion, without the other dangerous intermediate force expressions now deemed necessary in their production."
"Do you wish me to understand that on all parts of the earth's surface there is a continual expenditure of energy, an ever-ready current, that is really distinct from the light and heat of the sun, and also that the imponderable bodies that we [Pg 171] call heat, light, electricity, and magnetism are not substances at all?" ”

“ Thus, there is a constant current in the higher regions of the atmosphere, proceeding from the equator northward and southward to the poles; and, if the earth were at rest, there would be a constant wind in the lower regions of the atmosphere blowing directly from the poles to the equator, while in equatorial regions the two streamlets would meet, and neutralize each other’s influence. But the earth is not at rest! ”

“ If we take all the measurements from Earth-based observations over the last 75 years, we find that every current that has ever been seen from the Earth over 75 years is visible in one ten-hour rotation. ”

“ The heated air from the equator does indeed commence to flow in an upper current, and the cooled air from the pole in an under current; but, as the upper currents of air are speedily cooled by exposure to space, and the under currents are heated by contact with the earth's surface, they constantly change places—the lower current becoming the upper, and vice versâ. ”

“ In some cases, in short lines (8) , there is reason to fear that plate E.M.F.’s have been responsible for a good deal that has been ascribed to true earth currents. With deep earth plates, in dry ground, this source of uncertainty can, however, enter but little into the diurnal inequality.
4. Another difficulty is the question of the resistance in the earth itself. A given E.M.F. between plates 10 m. apart may mean very different currents travelling through the earth, according to the chemical constitution and condition of the surface strata. ”

“ When the whole mass of the planet, including the atmosphere, is taken into consideration, it is readily seen that all energy operations embodied in or associated with material on what is usually termed the surface of the earth take place at the bottom of this atmospheric ocean, or, in reality, in the interior of the earth. The operations themselves are the manifestations of purely terrestrial energy, which, by its working in various devices or arrangements of material is being transformed and transmitted from one form of matter to another. ”

“ Who but an infinite God could have calculated the enormous potential energy of the nebulous gases, required by contraction to cause the prodigious heat of a universe of suns?
The earth turns over noiselessly every 24 hours, carrying on its bosom, at the rate of 1000 mi. an hour, at dizzy heights, a most tenuous atmosphere, without a rustle, without the loss of a second in 1000 years. The earth with its satellite, is traveling around the sun at the rate of 18.5 mi. ”

“ Here we have a system of spheres, held by some power to a great central mass, around which they revolve with a fearful velocity. Nor is this all; the Solar System itself, bound by the same mystic chain to an undiscovered centre, moves towards a point in space at the rate of 33,550,000 geographical miles, whilst our earth performs one revolution around the sun. ”

“ The solar system of circulation, instead of being adapted, like that of the earth, to the distribution of heat received from without, was seen to be directed towards the transportation towards the surface of the heat contained within. Polar and equatorial currents, tending to a purely superficial equalisation of temperature, were replaced by vertical currents bringing up successive portions of the intensely heated interior mass, to contribute their share in turn to the radiation into space which might be called the proper function of a sun. ”

“ In the bygone era of which we are speaking the pressure of the atmosphere on the water's surface was 700 lb. or 800 lb. to the square inch; and therefore it could be heated up to a high temperature without evaporating rapidly.
Another thing began to happen in those days. All bodies in space attract one another; the Sun attracts its planets; the planets attract the Sun and their satellites; and the satellites in their turn attract the planets. Ages before the earth had a moon these forces were at work. ”

“ In virtue of this heat transformation, or heating effect of the sun, the temperature of material on the earth's surface is maintained in varying values from regions of high velocity to those of low—from equator to poles—according to latitude or according to the displacement of that material, in rotation, from the central axis. ”

“ The solid globe of the earth is enveloped in a mixture of gases, principally oxygen and nitrogen, which we call the air, or the atmosphere, and upon whose presence our life and most other forms of life depend. The atmosphere is retained by the attraction of the earth, and it rotates together with the earth. If this were not so—if the atmosphere stood fast while the earth continued to spin within it—a terrific wind would constantly blow from the east, having a velocity at the equator of more than a thousand miles an hour. ”

“ Once again with the astronomer, we gaze out on the huge planets of the solar system,—the groups and great galaxies of stars. Does the earth really seem so insignificant in its smallness?
The beautiful little earth-ball, with its precious freight of human beings, softly flies about the sun. Amply protected in a transparent case of atmosphere, it completes its tremendous journey of 576,000,000 miles once every year. During this year its temperature is varied by four seasons which are caused by the earth being inclined 231⁄2 degrees on its axis. ”

“ But one system is permanent, and the other is not.
For, as a matter of fact, we do not find in Nature such an arrangement as that in the second figure, or as that in which both the planets revolve in opposite directions to the sun’s rotation; what we do find is, that the planets go round in the same direction as the sun. And the explanation is undoubtedly connected with the important principle already illustrated, namely, that natural systems are in a condition in which the total quantity of energy undergoes continuous reduction in comparison with the moment of momentum. ”

“ Now this element, this sole active power, which [292] may render the air fluid, the water liquid, and the earth penetrable, might it not have been given to the terrestrial globe alone? Does analogy permit us to doubt that the other planets do not likewise contain a quantity of heat, which belongs to them alone, and which must render them capable of receiving and supporting living nature? ”

“ The aqueous equilibrium of the planet would thereby be disturbed, and a general system of currents and counter-currents would be immediately commenced—the oil, in an unbroken sheet on the surface, running towards the poles, and the water, in an under-current, towards the equator. ”

“ That the motions of the planets in the heavens may subsist an exceedingly long time.
In the Scholium of Prop. XL, Book II, I have shewed that a globe of water frozen into ice, and moving freely in our air, in the time that it would describe the length of its semi-diameter, would lose by the resistance of the air 1⁄4586 part of its motion; and the same proportion holds nearly in all globes, how great soever, and moved with whatever velocity. But that our globe of earth is of greater density than it would be if the whole consisted of water only, I thus make out. ”

“ No matter how early be the period which we consider, we find the same causes to be in operation. There was a time when, owing to the internal heat, the surface of the earth must have been as hot as boiling water. The loss of heat by radiation must then have taken place much more copiously than it does at present. The argument we are pursuing must therefore have applied with even greater force in those early days. ”

“ In the ethereal realm we know of the ethereal state; in the stellar realm we know of the ethereal and the fluid states; in the geonomic realm we know of the ethereal, the fluid, and the solid states.
In the study of the earth a differentiation is found in the air, the sea, the land, and the nucleus. They are also integrated by the rotation of the earth, which is the revolution of its particles. The air is imperfectly differentiated into winds. ”

“ The motion of the earth and other planets is continuously occurring under the influence of gravitation, thermal, luminous, and other incepting fields which link them to the central mass, the sun. As a result of the action of such fields, energy transformations arise which form the visible phenomena of the system in all its parts, each transformation, whether associated with animate or inanimate matter, being carried out through the medium of some arrangement of matter hereafter referred to as a material machine. ”

“ In order to utilize all the solar rays, we should need to have an immense number of earths arranged so as to touch each other, forming a hollow sphere around the sun, with the present radius of the earth's orbit. ”

“ For if the sun’s heat can be stored in cold bodies to be used thousands, or even millions of years afterward, may not earth’s escaping heat be likewise returned to earth, and every particle of it be held by earth, as water and air are held by it? ”

“ Then, going away from the earth, we could interrogate the planetary atmospheres, and seek in them the vapor of water, and with it one of the first conditions of the development of terrestrial life. We could also, comparing the composition of the planetary atmospheres with the astronomical facts which permit us to judge of the geological conditions of the surfaces of the planets, follow in them the atmospheric evolutions which on the earth belong to the domain of the past or of the future. ”

“ The earth in her path around the sun describes an ellipse, the sun’s place being one of its foci. In obedience to the law, already described, of the conservation of the axis of rotation, the axis of the earth constantly points towards the star in the constellation of the Little Bear. Recollecting this, and also the two facts, that a dense solid body absorbs heat more readily than a fluid one, and that radiation from the surface is constantly going on when absorption is not taking place, let us follow the earth in her orbit. ”

“ The phenomena of light, heat, electricity, result from changes wrought in matter by [Pg 9] motion. Every ray of sunshine, for instance, is an interwoven group of powerful energies. Whence do they come? From changes in the matter of the sun. For every measure of sunshine received by the earth an equivalent measure of solar matter has been changed. Through the sunbeam the varied forms of energy produced in the sun have been received, and stored up on this earth. For incalculable centuries the world has been clothed with abundant vegetation. ”

“ The rotation of the earth on its axis forces the terrestrial atmosphere, by its centrifugal motion, in undue proportion, around the equatorial belt, causing the same sort of atmospheric thinning at the poles which we see in the solar photosphere at its corresponding parts. ”

“ When the surface has been reached, then another law of heat declares what must happen next. It is, of course, by conduction that the heat passes from layer to layer in its outward progress, until it ultimately gains the surface. At the surface the heat is 148then absolutely removed from the solid earth either by the convection through the air or by direct radiation into space. ”

“ One school of geologists, resting its argument on very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of millions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium of temperature. Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. ”

“ The point is that in each case—that of a solidified globe like the earth, surrounded by a comparatively rare atmosphere; that of a partially cooled globe, like Jupiter, enveloped in a dense atmosphere of great depth; and that of a completely gaseous globe like the sun, possessing a sort of shell of partly condensed gases—certain regions near the equator are those in which the greatest disturbance is visible, and in every case, probably, the force of rotation is a powerful factor in the production of these zones of commotion. ”

“ Any point on the sun’s equator travels at four times the rotational velocity of one on the earth’s equator, but the sun’s attraction of gravity is twenty-seven and one-tenth times that of the earth, so that the piling up of an atmosphere of hydrogen would be considerable, and such depressions would not ordinarily exist there. ”

“ But, to return from a digression that is only of incidental interest to us here, I desire you to conceive of the amazing fact that the stupendous aggregate of terrestrial activity is derived from that infinitesimal fraction only of the solar emanations that is intercepted by the earth—a fraction less than the two-billionth part of the sum total of energy that he is unceasingly radiating into space ”