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letters F and K. They are not entirely black, and it is important to measure the residual light at the centre of the lines, because we know that it must have an intensity just strong enough to keep calcium atoms floating under solar gravity; as soon a the outflowing light is so weakened that it can support no more atoms it can suffer no further depredations, and so it emerges into outer spac with this limiting intensity. The measurement gives numerical data for working out the constants of the calcium atom including the time of relaxation mentioned above.
P. 75. The atoms at the top of the chromosphere rest on the weakened light which has passed through the screen below; the full sunlight (at the base of the chromosphere) would blow them away... Owing to the Doppler effect, a moving atom absorbs a rather different wave-length from a stationary atom; so that if for any cause an atom moves away from the sun, it will support itself on light which is a little to one side of the deepest absorption. This light, being more intense than that which provided a balance, will make the atom recede faster. The atom's own absorption will thus gradually draw clear of the absorption of the screen below... (hence) there is likely to be an escape of calcium into space.
P. 76. By Milne's theory we can calculate the whole weight of the sun's calcium chromosphere. Its mass is about 300 million tons--less than the tonnage handled by British railways every year. One scarcely expects to meet with such a trifling figure in astronomy. I think that solar observers must feel rather hoaxed when they consider the labour that they have been induced to spend on this airy nothing. But science does not despise trifles. And astronomy can still be instructive even when, for once in a way, it descends to common place numbers.
Question to readers: The Urantia Book (462) gives a figure of one one-millionth of a second for the relaxation time of the excited state of calcium compared with Eddington's one hundred-millionth of a second. Is The Urantia Book's figure a typographical or copying error, or some such, or is it a deliberate correction by the revelators of Professor Milne's calculations??? Can any readers respond? (e-mail us at kglaszio@ozemail.com.au)
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