Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Volume I, ENERGY: The Energy of the Sun - isaac worldwithinworlds
Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 , by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this bookThe most serious problem raised by the law of conservation of energy involved the sun. Until 1847, scientists did not question sunlight. The sun radiated vast quantities of energy but that apparently was its nature and was no more to be puzzled over than the fact that the earth rotated on its axis.
Was there some source of energy greater than chemical energy? What about the energy of motion? Helmholtz suggested that meteors might be falling into the sun at a steady rate. The energy of their collisions might then be converted into heat and light and this could keep the sun shining for as long as the supply of meteors held out—even millions of years.
Helmholtz calculated that the sun’s contraction over the 6000 years of recorded history would have reduced its diameter only 560 miles—a change that would not have been noticeable to the unaided eye. Since the development of the telescope, two and a half centuries earlier, the decrease in 57diameter would have been only 23 miles and that was not measurable by the best techniques of Helmholtz’s day.
Yet there seemed absolutely no other way of accounting for the sun’s energy supply. Either the law of conservation of energy was wrong , or the painfully collected evidence of geologists and biologists was wrong ,—or there was some source of energy greater than any known in the 19th century, whose existence had somehow escaped mankind .
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The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 (of 3): Atomic Weights | HackerNoonWorlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Volume I: ATOMIC WEIGHTS - projectgutenberg hackernoonbooks
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