NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



ply the brilliant fulfilment of Maxwell's predictions. 

 The Rontgen rays were, so to speak, a flash from 

 a blue sky. Their discovery would undoubtedly 

 have been made in a year or two at least, for there 

 were several workers Lenard, Perrin, and others 

 delving in the same field. Nevertheless, their de- 

 tection was pure chance. 



The Rontgen rays produce light. But, unlike 

 light, they can neither be reflected nor bent. They 

 go straight through things. There was no way to 

 measure their speed, nor find out what they were. 

 They did not seem to be a form of wave-motion at 

 all. This gave rise to all sorts of suspicions. In 

 nature there are no isolated phenomena ; that is the 

 sure lesson which all the advance from Galileo and 

 Descartes has taught. If the Rontgen rays were 

 a wholly new mode of action in nature, there might 

 be no end of such ; we might have to imagine other 

 ethers, and velocities swifter than light. 



We need not go to the trouble. The Rontgen 

 rays are undoubtedly a form of light, for they 

 travel at exactly the same speed. Professor 

 Blondlot, in Paris, has just succeeded in effect- 

 ing their measurement and he finds it identical. 

 The especial figure of 184,000 miles per second 

 is not one likely to be hit on by two different 

 kinds of motion. We already knew of invisible 

 light-waves only a quarter as long as the short- 

 So 



