Joseph McCabe

“ Within our experience energy is being converted into heat more abundantly than heat is being converted into other energy. This would hold out a prospect of a paralysed universe, and that stage would have been reached long ago if the system had not had a definite beginning. But what knowledge have we of conversions of energy in remote regions of space, in the depths of stars or nebulae, or in the sub-material world of which we have just caught a glimpse? ”

“ Every theory of the electron assumes it to be some sort of nodule or disturbed area in the ether. It is sometimes described as "a particle of negative electricity" and associated with "a particle of positive electricity" in building up the atom. The phrase is misleading for those who regard electricity as a force or energy, and it gives rise to speculation as to whether "matter" has not been resolved into "force." Force or energy is not conceived by physicists as a substantial reality, like matter, but an abstract expression of certain relations of matter or electrons. ”

“ Tiny as the dimensions of the atom are, they afford a vast space for the movement of these energetic little bodies. The speed of the stars in their courses is slow compared with the flight of the electrons. Since they fly out of the system, in the conditions we have described, at a speed of between 90,000 and 100,000 miles a second, they must be revolving with terrific rapidity within it. Indeed, the most extraordinary discovery of all is that of the energy imprisoned within these tiny systems, which men have for ages regarded as "dead" matter. ”

“ With these extraordinary powers the physicist is able to penetrate a world that lies immeasurably below the range of the most powerful microscope, and introduce us to systems more bewildering than those of the astronomer. ”

“ The inexpert imagination reels, but it must be remembered that the speed of the electron is a measured quantity, and it is within the resources of science to estimate the force necessary to project it at that speed. ”

“ Light is already generally recognised as a rapid series of electro-magnetic waves or pulses in ether. Magnetism becomes intelligible as a condition of a body in which the electrons revolve round the atom in nearly the same plane. The difference between positive and negative electricity is at least partly illuminated. An atom will repel an atom when its equilibrium is disturbed by the approach of an additional electron; the physicist even follows the movement of the added electron, and describes it revolving 2200 billion times a second round the atom, to escape being absorbed in it. ”

“ Sir J. J. Thomson calculates that, allowing only one electron to each atom in a gramme of hydrogen, the tiny globule of gas will contain as much energy as would be obtained by burning thirty-five tons of coal. If, he says, an appreciable fraction of the energy that is contained in ordinary matter were to be set free, the earth would explode and return to its primitive nebulous condition. Mr. Fournier d'Albe tells us that the force with which electrons repel each other is a quadrillion times greater than the force of gravitation that brings atoms together ”

“ This theory not only meets all the facts that have been discovered in an industrious decade of research, not only offers a splendid prospect of introducing unity into the eighty-one different elements of the chemist, but it opens out a still larger prospect of bringing a common measure into the diverse forces of the universe. ”

“ Do we anywhere perceive the evolution of the material elements out of electrons, just as we perceive the devolution, or disintegration, of atoms into electrons? There is good ground for thinking that we do. ”

“ The physicist therefore concludes—warning us that on this further point he is drawing a theoretical conclusion—that the atoms of ordinary matter are made up of electrons. If that is the case, the hydrogen atom, the lightest of all, must be a complex system of some 1700 electrons, and as we ascend the scale of atomic weight the clusters grow larger and larger, until we come to the atoms of the heavier metals with more than 250,000 electrons in each atom. ”

“ Our sun is, as far as our present knowledge goes, one of modest dimensions. Arcturus and Canopus must be thousands of times larger than it. Yet our sun is 320,000 times heavier than the earth, and the earth weighs some 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. But it is only in resolving these stupendous masses into their tiniest elements that we can reach the ultimate realities, or foundations, of the whole. ”

“ Laymen are apt to smile—it is a very foolish smile—at these figures, but it is enough to say that the independent and even more delicate methods suggested by recent progress in physics have quite confirmed them. ”

“ Some of the experts conceive the electron as a minute whirlpool or vortex in the ocean of ether; some hold that it is a centre of strain in ether; some regard ether as a densely packed mass of infinitely small grains, and think that the positive and negative corpuscles, as they seem to us, are tiny areas in which the granules are unequally distributed. Each theory has its difficulties. We do not know the origin of the electron, because we do not know the nature of ether. To some it is an elastic solid, quivering in waves at every movement of the particles ”

“ Take a cubic millimetre of hydrogen. As a millimetre is less than 1/25th of an inch, the reader must imagine a tiny bubble of gas that would fit comfortably inside the letter "o" as it is printed here. The various refined methods of the modern physicist show that there are 40,000 billion molecules (each consisting of two atoms of the gas) in this tiny bubble. It is a little universe, repeating on an infinitesimal scale the numbers and energies of the stellar universe. ”

“ But if these periods were quadrillions, instead of millions, of years, they would still have no relation to the idea of eternity. All that we can say is that we find nothing in nature that points to a beginning or an end. ”

“ Through these empty spaces the atoms dash at an average speed of more than a thousand miles an hour, each passing something like 6,000,000,000 of its neighbours in the course of every second. Yet this particle of gas is a thinly populated world in comparison with a particle of metal. ”