THE NATURE OF X-RADIATION 



By W. F. D. CHAMBERS, B.A. Cantab., 



Barrister -at- Law. 

 (For Illustrations, see Page 390). 



Is the universe a liquid or "flowing crystal" in 

 process of transformation, with varying acceleration, 

 to the solid or cubic state ?* 



Daring as such a speculation may appear to-day, 

 its analogies are almost involuntarily suggested by 

 recent developments in optics and crystallography ; 

 and speculation (in leisure hours) gives a zest to 

 science. 



Even the older physics and astronomy taught us 

 that it was not improbable that the sidereal universe 

 might be tending, under laws of conservation and 

 dissipation, to a uniform diffusion of heat, a rigor 

 mortis, in which there should exist no longer the 

 restless surge of potential differences which is 

 responsible for the grand drama of life and 

 evolution. 



Coming now to sober facts, it will be familiar to 

 your readers that the X-rays, hitherto supposed 

 to be subject neither to refraction, diffraction, nor 

 deflection by magnetic fields, have at last yielded 

 to the seductions of crystalline substances, as the 

 present writer predicted they would four years ago. 

 From the year 1905 a particulate theory of the 

 aether, or medium supposed to pervade space, has 

 been advocated, and it was proposed that light, in 

 some forms at least, might consist of polar particles, 

 or self-satisfying doublets, which neutralise inter se 

 their chemical valencies, and, even in a high degree, 

 their susceptibility to external stress. The X-rays, 

 and at first the alpha particle of helium, emitted by 

 the radium atom undergoing transformation, were 

 supposed to be among these forms. This hypo- 

 thesis, first published in The Journal of Downside 

 College, 1907, was later sketched as a general 

 theory of Energy-Action in the Scientific Monthly 

 Magazine. The distinctive geometrical feature of 

 the attempt was the use of Gregory St. Vincent's 

 principle of the quadrature of the hyperbola, which 

 curve in its rectangular form was supposed to furnish 

 a limit to the excursions of light and cathode 

 particles, when the curve is transformed to polar 

 coordinates, and rotation round an axis is supposed 

 added to the motion. Professor Bickerton, quite 

 independently of the writer, has made use of a 

 similar geometric scheme for his Kinetol, vide 

 " Birth of Worlds and Systems," 1911, page 17. 



Benoist [Journal de Physique (3), X, 1901, page 

 653, and elsewhere] has shown that when X-rays are 

 allowed to fall upon various metallic surfaces after 

 passing through a standardising prism of paraffin, 

 the molecular weights plotted against the absorptions 



seem to approximate to such a curve, and this law 

 of absorption (which must correspond with a redistri- 

 bution of material particles) is independent of 

 temperature. Furthermore, there is reason to think 

 that individual series of compounds are susceptible 

 of treatment in the same way, especially as regards 

 their critical changes at high temperatures. We may 

 also recall the fact that in his original experiments 

 on the modifications of light produced by narrow 

 apertures Newton found that the shadows produced 

 by knife-blades placed in the path, approximated to 

 rectangular hyperbolas the more nearly the edges 

 were brought together. 



Professor Bragg has given the more complete 

 expression of the doublet theory of X-radiation, and 

 Tutton has dealt with the conception in its wider 

 application in his work on crystals (" International 

 Science Series "), where he illustrates the various 

 internal and external forms which may be produced 

 by " astatic " or moving magnetic fields. 



It has also been pointed out that such a theory of 

 the ultimate significance of Mendeleef's famous 

 principle of periodicity would probably lead us to 

 suspect a composite nature of hydrogen, which 

 might be considered as a primary doublet, or perhaps 

 connected with the terrestrially unknown gases 

 coronium and nebulium ; and now Sir J. J. 

 Thomson has given grounds for believing in the 

 possibility of some such modification of Prout's 

 hypothesis. Hydrogen, if not composite, is at least 

 capable of some extraordinary action with neon. 



It must not, however, be supposed that such 

 speculations are opposed fundamentally to the 

 undulatory theory of light. The discoveries of 

 Perrin in connection with, the " Brownian move- 

 ments " in fluids in no way invalidate tidal theory, 

 though they tend to show that water may be 

 considered from another, and perhaps deeper, point 

 of view than that which treats of the unresolved 

 motion of its particles, or movements en masse. The 

 mechanism of ripples or " pulses " in aether may in 

 like manner be shown to be subject to general laws 

 of arithmetical and geometrical progression in the 

 distribution of constituents, and yet this need by no 

 means change the law of averages, the differential 

 equations of the group effects. Similarly we assert 

 nothing of the movements of individual birds in a 

 flight or of bees in a swarm merely because we see 

 numbers of them together moving as if they had no 

 purpose or aim in their random wanderings on 

 behalf of nest or hive. Indeed there are cases where 



:,: Some recent theorists have sought to reduce even colloids to a crystal basis. 



378 



