Note 5 — Chapter IV · MARS, A WORLD MORE ADVANCED THAN OURS

Many of the present difficulties about temperatures on the various planets would be beautifully disposed of if we could accept the theory urged by Mr. Cope Whitehouse, to the effect that the sun is not really a hot body at all, and that what we call solar light and heat are only local manifestations produced in our atmosphere by the transformation of some other form of energy transmitted from the sun; very much as the electric impulses carried by a wire from the transmitting to the receiving station on a telephone line are translated by the receiver into waves of sound. According to this theory, which is here mentioned only as an ingenuity and because something of the kind so frequently turns up in one form or another in popular semi-scientific literature, the amount of heat and light on a planet would depend mainly upon local causes.