940 Sir Oliver Lodge on 



would be required to remove one of these two electrons 

 than is required to remove one from the outer shell. If r 

 therefore, we interpret our results on the basis of this theory,. 

 each of the three ionization velocities found in neon would 

 correspond to the removal of one of the eight outer electrons. 

 Our results therefore indicate that in the outer shell of the 

 neon atom electrons occupy three dissimilar positions with 

 regard to the nucleus and inner shell. This conclusion is 

 in contradiction to the theory of Lewis and Langmuir in 

 its present form, but it is possible that the essential features 

 of the theory might be retained without necessitating absolute 

 similarity of position among the electrons in any particular 

 shell. 



LXXXIX. Ether, Light, and Matter. 

 By Sir Oliver Lodge *. 



IN the October 1913 number of the Phil. Mag. vol. xxvi. 

 pp. 636-673, there is a remarkable though highly 

 speculative paper by Professor Bruce McLaren (killed, alas I 

 in the war) in which, among other things, he attempts to 

 explain gravity by treating matter as a source or sink of 

 ether. The flow of ether which is thus necessarily postu- 

 lated is supposed to transfer momentum from the destroyed 

 portion to the boundary of its destruction, and thus virtually 

 to exert a stress on the surface of transition, notwithstanding 

 that matter is unlike a foreign body immersed in a stream, 

 but is a peculiarity of the ether itself. He seems to think 

 that physicists will object to locomotion of the ether, as 

 perturbing to the rays of light ; but so long as motion 

 is irrotational it can be shown that rays of light are not 

 affected, though the waves are carried along and made 

 excentric. In other words the path of a specified unit of 

 luminous energy is not altered by any irrotational drift, 

 whatever happens to the wave fronts ; for in a moving- 

 ether the rays, i. e. the paths of energy, are not normal to 

 the wave front, and nothing perceptible need happen. That 

 nothing happens is conceded by the Principle of Relativity ; 

 though an explanation of why nothing perceptible happens, 

 and the idea of drift of wave fronts, are foreign to that 

 theory. 



That nothing happens on ordinary theory, at least to the 

 first order of aberration magnitude, follows thus : — If the 



* Communicated by the Author. 



