Page:A Voyage in Space (1913).djvu/241

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THE SUN
221

they would never get into curved lines; they would remain higgledy-piggledy. In the same way the hydrogen on the Sun gets into curved lines because it feels the magnetic attraction, while the calcium remains higgledy-piggledy.

Fig. 64.—Iron filings near a Magnet.

But, you will ask, what is it on the Sun that correspends to the little magnet? and the answer has been given us in a beautiful manner quite recently, by Professor Hale, the great American astronomer, who has erected the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. His proof depends on experiments with polarized light which we cannot stop to explain just now, though I will show you some pretty experiments with it at the end of the lecture; but