86 PHYSICS OF MATTER 



more complex to less complex forms, and also the possible develop- 

 ment of more complex atoms from simpler ones. 



Already we begin to see the effect of these recent discoveries 

 and ideas on other departments of science. The clue at last seems to 

 have been found to those long-standing enigmas of nature, thunder- 

 storms, the Aurora Borealis, the zodiacal light, and the tails of 

 comets. But these achievements belong perhaps rather to the 

 realm of the physics of the ether and of the electron, than to that 

 of the physics of matter. 



