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Updated: June 27, 2025
If I am not mistaken, another Frenchman, M. Pouillet, estimates the temperature of space at 160° below zero. We shall be able to verify that." "Not now," answered Barbicane, "for the solar rays striking directly upon our thermometer would give us, on the contrary, a very elevated temperature.
Barbicane let half-an-hour go by, more than sufficient time to allow the instrument to descend to the level of the temperature of space. The thermometer was then rapidly drawn in. Barbicane calculated the quantity of mercury spilt into the little phial soldered to the lower part of the instrument, and said "One hundred and forty degrees centigrade below zero!" M. Pouillet was right, not Fourier.
It is not intended at present to discuss the necessity of tenuity with reference to the functions of the sun as a radiator; yet it will be proper to observe that on merely dynamical grounds the enormous density of the solar envelope which would result from low temperature presents an unanswerable objection to the assumption of Pouillet, Vicaire, Sainte-Claire Deville, and other eminent savants, that the temperature of the solar surface does not reach 3,000° C.
Adopting this formula, Pouillet derived from his observations on solar heat a solar temperature of somewhere between 1,461° and 1,761° C. Now, the higher of these points which is nearly that of melting platinum is undoubtedly surpassed at the focus of certain burning-glasses which have been constructed of such power as virtually to bring objects placed there within a quarter of a million of miles of the photosphere.
"It is very much," replied Barbicane; "the temperature which was observed in the polar regions, at Melville Island and Fort Reliance, that is 76@ Fahrenheit below zero." "If I mistake not," said Nicholl, "M. Pouillet, another savant, estimates the temperature of space at 250@ Fahrenheit below zero. We shall, however, be able to verify these calculations for ourselves."
Another important result of the Allegheny work was the abolition of the anomalous notion of the "temperature of space," fixed by Pouillet at -140° C. For space in itself can have no temperature, and stellar radiation is a negligible quantity.
"Baron Fourier, of the French Academy, wrote a famous treatise on Heat, which I remember reading twenty years ago in Penington's book store," promptly responded the Captain; "Pouillet was an eminent professor of Physics at the Sorbonne, where he died, last year, I think." "Thank you, Captain," said Ardan; "the cold does not injure your memory, though it is decidedly on the advance.
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