MATHEMATICS 



the periodic times of the planets are proportional 

 to the cubes of their distances from the Sun. 

 Now these Kepler laws are known to be true in 

 the case of atoms, so that ordinary dynamics is 

 not really superseded in the interior of an atom. 

 In particular, the formula above is certainly true 

 in a hydrogen atom. 



In fact, the laws of ordinary dynamics remain 

 valid up to the point at which the emission of 

 radiation by the atom is considered. This 

 emission is a transference of energy from matte" 

 the atom to the aether, and not directly from 

 matter to matter in the sense we meet, for 

 instance, in ordinary macroscopic mechanics in 

 the impact of two billiard balls or the driving of 

 a nail into a piece of wood. It is this transference 

 of energy between matter and aether which intro- 

 duces something new, and the Quantum Theory 

 in its successful form states that among all the 

 steady states of an atom which ordinary dynamics 

 allows, only a certain number are in fact possible, 

 during which the atom emits no energy to the 

 aether, and these are the states which it takes up. 

 If energy is emitted, it must be of an amount 

 which enables the atom, after the operation of 

 emission, to fall into one of the ether steady states. 

 Thus the emission can only occur in what we may 

 call bundles of energy dependent, like everything 

 else about the atom, on the universal constant h. 



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