It was the
vehicle that bore the terrific streams of energy from star to
planet across the immense reaches of space. As the atoms of
matter lay in it, one thought of the crystal forming in its
mother-lye, or the star forming in the nebula, and wondered
whether the atom was not in some such way condensed out of the
ether. By the last decade of the century the theory was
confidently advanced--notably by Lorentz and Larmor-- though it
was still without a positive basis. How the basis was found, in
the last decade of the nineteenth century, may be told very
briefly.
Sir William Crookes had in 1874 applied himself to the task of
creating something more nearly like a vacuum than the old
air-pumps afforded. When he had found the means of reducing the
quantity of gas in a tube until it was a million times thinner
than the atmosphere, he made the experiment of sending an
electric discharge through it, and found a very curious result.
From the cathode (the negative electric point) certain rays
proceeded which caused a green fluorescence on the glass of the
tube. Since the discharge did not consist of the atoms of the
gas, he concluded that it was a new and mysterious substance,
which he called "radiant matter.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47