![]() ![]() ![]() He suggested in 1899 that “unrecognised sources of heat” may exist inside the Sun, energies of an “atomic or ultra-atomic nature”. ![]() The first glimpse of a possible solution came American geologist Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. By the end of the 19th Century, geologists had sufficient evidence that the Earth had to be more than a billion years old. For example, Charles Darwin’s views on evolution required the Earth to be much older. Kelvin figured out that the Sun could not be more than 40 million years old, and he clashed with the geologists and biologists of the time. He argued in 1854 that the compression of the gas cloud caused the Sun to heat up, an idea defended by the British Physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) until the 1890s. Solar power Helmholtz agreed with the views of philosopher Immanuel Kant and mathematician/astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace that the Sun was formed by theĬontraction of a huge gas cloud – a theory viewed as correct today. Understanding the atomic nucleus and the chameleon-like nature of an elusive particle finally resolved the mystery WHAT POWERS THE SUN BY ALEXANDER HELLEMANS Until the 19th Century, no one had any idea how the Sun produced energy. Find out how scientists made the intellectual journey from believing that the Sun was powered by an endless meteor bombardment, to discovering a nuclear reaction that stretched our understanding of physics to its limits.
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