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Updated: May 5, 2025
In its details the hypothesis of Arrhenius also affords an explanation of many peculiarities of the Zodiacal Light, such as that it is confined to the neighborhood of the ecliptic, and that it is stronger on the side of the earth which is just turning away from a position under the sun than on the other side; but it would carry us beyond our limits to go into these particulars.
This result would be in flagrant contradiction with the fact that, everywhere and always, a solution of salt contains strictly the same proportions of its component elements. M. Arrhenius answers to this that the electrical forces in ordinary conditions prevent separation by diffusion or by any other process.
This resemblance had often been noted before Arrhenius elaborated his hypothesis. Without intending to treat his interesting theory as more than a possibly correct explanation of the phenomena of the Aurora, we may call attention to some apparently confirmatory facts. One of the most striking of these relates to a seasonal variation in the average number of auroræ.
One or two other curious points in connection with Arrhenius' hypothesis may be mentioned. First, the number of auroræ, according to his explanation, ought to be greatest in the daytime, when the face of the earth on the sunward side is directly exposed to the atomic bombardment.
Professor Van t' Hoff, like other chemists, would certainly have rejected in fact, he did so at first such a conception, if, about the same time, an illustrious Swedish scholar, M. Arrhenius, had not been brought to the same idea by another road, and, had not by stating it precisely and modifying it, presented it in an acceptable form.
The first view, that the germs of life may have come to this planet on a meteoric visitor from some other world, as a storm-driven bird may take its parasites to some distant island, is not without adherents to-day. It was put forward long ago by Lord Kelvin and others; it has been revived by the distinguished Swede, Professor Svante Arrhenius.
Professor Ostwald and his pupils have drawn from the hypothesis of Arrhenius manifold consequences which have been the cause of considerable progress in physical chemistry. Professor Ostwald has shown, in particular, how this hypothesis permits the quantitative calculation of the conditions of equilibrium of electrolytes and solutions, and especially of the phenomena of neutralization.
The views of an intellectual incompetent, such as Bryan was, are spread widecast, but few know the extent of the scepticism of Edison, Luther Burbank, Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrlich, Ernst Haeckel, Robert Koch, Fridjof Nansen, and Swante Arrhenius.
Apart from its geometrical relations to the position of the sun, the variability of the Zodiacal Light appears to affirm its solar dependence, and this too would be accounted for by Arrhenius' hypothesis better than by the old theory of coronal extension.
Even more so was the reference to the life particles, the idea of Arrhenius, the great Swede, of life starting on earth through the dropping of minute, life spores, propelled through space by the driving power of light and, encountering favourable environment here, developing through the vast ages into man and every other living thing we know.
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