supposed that the heat of the sun may be recruited by the incessant falling of meteoric matter upon the sun's surface. If that matter had been drawn only by the sun's attraction from the remote depths of space, it would fall upon the sun with an enormously great velocity, amounting to about 300 miles a second. It follows from the principle of the equivalence between heat and mechanical energy that a body entering the sun with this velocity would contribute to the sun a considerable quantity of heat. It is known that small meteoroids abound in the solar system; they are constantly seen in the form of shooting stars when they dash into our atmosphere, and it can hardly be doubted that myriads of such bodies must fall into the sun. It does not, however, seem likely that enough matter of this kind can enter the sun to account for its mighty radiation of heat. It can be shown that the quantity of matter necessary for this purpose is so large that a mass equal in the aggregate to the mass of the earth would have to fall into the sun every century if the radiation of the sun were to be defrayed from this source. That so large a stream of matter should be perennially drawn into the sun is, to say the least, highly improbable.
But it is quite possible to account for the radiation of the sun on strictly scientific principles, even if we discard entirely the contributions due to meteoric matter. As the sun parts with its heat it must contract, in virtue of the general law that all bodies contract when cooling; but in the act of contraction an amount of heat is produced. By this the process of cooling is greatly retarded. It can, indeed, be shown that, if the sun contracts so that his diameter decreases one mile every twenty-five years, the amount of heat necessary to supply his radiation would
