242 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol, XXXVI. No. 921 



unseen and ghostlike in the darkness around a 

 burnt-out sun. Yet, only a few miles down in its 

 interior, in strange contrast to the dreadful death- 

 bringing cold of its surface, the gigantic furnaces 

 of the deep, immense reservoirs of power and 

 energy, will still gleam and glow. So the world 

 will continue for long eons of ages, until its 

 matter dissolves away and rushes into the oblirion 

 of the ether, or until it is shattered in some mighty 

 cosmical collision and resolved into a glowing 

 nebula again, only to begin anew another vast 

 cycle of life (p. 159). 



Again, of the electrons: 



This primary stufE is negative electricity, which 

 is therefore a true chemical element. A flash of 

 lightning consists of the swift rush of innumerable 

 myriads of these negative electrical atoms, flying 

 with the enormous speed of a hundred thousand 

 miles and more a second. An electric current 

 flowing along a wire consists likewise of a torrent 

 of these particles flashing along between the atoms 

 which make up the wire. Light is but the swift 

 shudder of the ether set up by the rapid whirl of 

 these negative electrons round their tiny orbits in 

 matter atoms. All the atoms of the elements con- 

 sist of aggregations of many thousands of these 

 bodies and originated in very different quantities, 

 as follows: In the very beginning of time, long 

 before Man, Earth, or Sun had come into exist- 

 ence, before even there was a suspicion of their 

 formation, space was filled with a vast sea of elec- 

 trical vapor. The vapor was composed not of 

 atoms, for matter atoms had not yet come into 

 existence, but of the tinier electrical particles 

 mentioned above, the measureless speed of whose 

 motions caused the whole to thrill with a faint 

 crepuscular light, and appear from a great dis- 

 tance as a faintly luminous cloud, like one of the 

 nebulae which gleam nightly at us down from the 

 sky. 



The vapor, being composed of electrical atoms, 

 was electrified beyond all measure, and stretched 

 gleaming with its electrical fires, through the dark- 

 ness of space like a flaming sword. 



... In the earliest nebulae — -the first stage of 

 matter of which we have any knowledge — there 

 exist only four elements, namely, two still unknown 

 upon the earth, together with hydrogen and helium. 

 These are the four elements from which all the 

 others have been formed, and these authors (A. C. 

 and A. E. Jessup) term them "protons" to dis- 

 tinguish them from the other elements. The elec- 



trons are supposed to condense about the atoms of 

 these protons in concentric rings; so that in order 

 to imagine the appearance of an atom, we must 

 look upon it as composed of a series of rings of 

 various sizes, whose particles are in exceedingly 

 rapid motion, and indeed, as we shall see presently, 

 the stability of the rings is a consequence of the 

 rapidity of the motion of the particles of which 

 they are composed (pp. 37, 39). 



Of the velocity of electronic motion: 



Tremendous as the velocities reigning in the 

 molecular world may seem to us at first sight, yet 

 they are quite insignificant when compared to the 

 swiftness of the whirling motions going on within 

 the atoms themselves; the particles building up 

 the atoms flash through over a HUNDRED 

 THOUSAND MILES A SECOND! Incredible, 

 you will say; nevertheless it is a sober fact of 

 science. In every stone and stick about us, cease- 

 lessly, second by second, day by day, century by 

 century, age by age, these terrific motions are 

 going on. In the tiniest grain of dust in the 

 millionth part of a second the rush of atomic 

 events is so incredibly swift as to defy all con- 

 ception and calculation (p. 21). 



If an intelligent inhabitant of our electronic 

 microcosm were suddenly transferred to our world, 

 and managed to retain his mental characteristics 

 unchanged, our life here, busy as it seems to us, 

 would represent to him a changeless eternity, since 

 in a single second of our time the electronic world 

 has time to revolve billions of times round its 

 central sun. His atomic years are almost infinitely 

 shorter than ours and his sense of time almost 

 infinitely finer. Time and space are, after all, 

 merely relative conceptions (p. 81). 



Under Hydrogen is the story of some frag- 

 ments of zinc carelessly left inside the boiler 

 of a German warship : 



The hold was filled with busy stokers, and the 

 great engines throbbed, driving the mighty vessel 

 swiftly through the sea. All this time the water 

 was heated in the boiler to an exceedingly high 

 temperature and the zinc was dissolving rapidly in 

 it, giving off a large amount of hydrogen gas. 

 This mingled with the air in the boiler to form a 

 terribly explosive mixture, so, all unknown to the 

 men working around, the great boiler was gradu- 

 ally filled with the deadly gaseous mixture. Sud- 

 denly, without a moment's notice, with a blinding 

 flash of light and a roar like an enormous thunder 

 peal, the great boiler blew to pieces, killing or 



