52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



HYPOTHESIS OF KADIANT MATTES 1 



By MORRIS LOEB, Ph.D. 



THE enormous literature which has developed from the discovery of 

 radium and from the study of cognate phenomena has made it 

 increasingly difficult to form a calm opinion upon the merits of all 

 the claims which have heen advanced, and upon the validity of the 

 theories which have been based upon them. Undoubtedly, the great bulk 

 of the experimental data is exact, although time may show that some 

 of the experiments which were recorded before the technique was fully 

 developed may require correction. Without questioning in the slightest 

 degree the experiments reported by some of the skillful observers of 

 modern times, one is, nevertheless, permitted to hesitate in adopting 

 hypotheses that not only subvert formerly accepted ideas, but also 

 seem, in many cases, inconsistent with one another. 



The chemical world has been accused of accepting too dogmatically 

 the theory of the conservation of matter, the indivisibility of the atom, 

 etc. Ought we not, then, to guard ourselves against a similar fault in 

 adopting newer views? 



I propose to take up seriatim the methods of reasoning which have 

 led to the present hypothesis of radiant matter as expressed by its chief 

 exponents, and to indicate some points which seem to me to be incon- 

 sistent with older views, or in conflict with one another; and I shall 

 begin with what may, from the present point of view, be called a static 

 phenomenon, the behavior of the atom toward light. It is known that 

 Lorentz modified Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light, by assum- 

 ing that the vibrations from which light-waves originate are not pro- 

 duced by the atom as a whole, but rather by the vibration of its positive 

 or negative electric charge, conceived as a special entity, which we may 

 now personify, as it were, by the more recently coined name electron. 

 The electron vibrates in an elliptical path which is really the result of 

 two circular oscillations in opposite directions, and of differing ampli- 

 tudes, but of identical period. An alteration of the radii of these cir- 

 cles would merely alter the shape of the ellipse; but if the periods of 

 the two circular motions were made to differ, no single resultant could 

 appear, for the two vibrations would produce waves of different length, 

 i. e., light rays of different refrangibility. Now, a magnetic strain 



1 Extracts from a review presented to the New York Section of the Amer- 

 ican Chemical Society at its meetings, November, 1907. 



