Ether and Energy in Evolution of Matter 3 



it has been proved that at least some of the so-called material 

 elements can be further split up, and so transformed into sim- 

 pler elements. Thus the metal uranium gradually changes 

 into ionium, and later into radium, while it again can be changed 

 into helium. But experiment and atomic weight alike suggest 

 strongly that the scarce element polonium becomes transformed 

 into helium and likewise into lead. Furthermore, since it has 

 been found that the characteristics of all of the so-called ele- 

 ments can be expressed in terms of their atomic weight, this 

 would suggest that possibly a continuous and definite relation 

 exists between all of the elements. Accordingly, some physi- 

 cists from Front's time (1815) onward have regarded hydrogen 

 — with atomic weight 1 — as the sole element, from which, by 

 increasingly complex unions and transfers of energy, the other 

 now known 82 elements have resulted. 



In reaching this conclusion, however, physicists have been 

 almost insensibly carried another step backward, so as to suggest 

 that the world — and possibly all sidereal space — is the arena 

 for only two primitive and primeval entities, ether and energy. 

 The former consists of highly elastic particles, absolutely inert 

 in themselves, but when charged with definite amounts of 

 energy they have properties conferred on them that have 

 caused us in the past to name them ultimate atoms, of which 

 hydrogen might be regarded as the simplest. 



But the development of electro-chemistry has introduced a 

 still more fundamental conception as to the ultimate material 

 unit. From the researches of J. J. Thomson and of Larmor 

 (5, 6) it has been shown that even the unit-element hydrogen, 

 as well as others of higher atomic weight, when rendered incan- 

 descent, gives off extremely minute negatively electrified ''cor- 

 puscles" or electrons. The radius of each of these is about 

 the 100.000 P^rt of that of a hydrogen atom, and its mass about 

 the fjoo part. So it may be said that the ultimate physical 

 unit is the electron or corpuscle, that is innnensely smaller 

 than the hydrogen atom. This probably has an inert but 

 elastic ether core or center, and carries around it a charge of 

 negative electricity. When brought in contact with a body 



