The Ether
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Hertz vibrations and the longest light wave is less than the difference between the longest and shortest light waves, for some of the shortest oscillations are only a few millionths of an inch long. Doubtless even this gap will soon be bridged over.
The settlement of the fact that light is a magneto-electric oscillation is in no sense an explanation of the nature of light. It is only a transference of the problem, for the question then arises as to the nature of the medium and of the mechanical actions involved in such a medium which sustains and transmits these electro-magnetic disturbances.
A suggestion which is very attractive on account of its simplicity is that the ether itself is electricity; a much more probable one is that electricity is an ether strain — that a displacement of the ether is equivalent to an electric current. If this is true, we are returning to our elastic-solid theory. I may quote a statement which Lord Kelvin made in reply to a rather skeptical question as to the existence of a medium about which so very little is supposed to be known. The reply was: “ Yes, ether is the only form of matter about which we know anything at all.” In fact, the moment we begin to inquire into the nature of the ultimate particles o; ordinary matter, we are at once enveloped in a sea of conjecture and hypotheses—all of great difficulty and complexity.
One of the most promising of these hypotheses is the uether vortex theory,” which, if true, has the merit of introducing nothing new into the hypotheses already made, brt only of specifying the particular form of motion required. The most natural form of such vortex motions with which to deal is that illustrated by ordinary smoke rings, such as are frequently blown from the stack of a locomotive. Such vortex rings may easily be produced by filling with smoke a box which has a circular aperture at one end and a rubber diaphragm at the other, and then tapping the rubber. The
Light Waves and Their Uses
friction against the side of the opening, as the puff of smoke passes ont, produces a rotary motion, and the result will be smoke rings or vortices.
Investigation shows that these smoke rings possess, to a certain degree, the properties which we are accustomed to associate with atoms, notwithstanding the fact that the medium in which these smoke rings exists is far from ideal. If the medium were ideal, it would be devoid of friction, and then the motion, when once started, would continue indefinitely, and that part of the ether which is differentiated by this motion would ever remain so.
Another peculiarity of the ring is that it cannot be cut —it simply winds around the knife. Of course, in a very short time the motion in a smoke ring ceases in consequence of the viscosity of the air, but it would continue indefinitely in such a frictionless medium as we suppose the ether to be.
There are a number of other analogies which we have not time to enter into — quite a number of details and instances of the interactions of the various atoms which have been investigated. In fact, there are so many analogies that we are tempted to think that the vortex ring is in reality an enlarged image of the atom. The mathematics of the subject is unfortunately very difficult, and this seems to be one of the principal reasons for the slow progress made in the theory.
Suppose that an ether strain corresponds to an electric charge, an ether displacement to the electric current, these ether vortices to the atoms—if we continue these suppositions, we arrive at what may be one of the grandest generalizations of modern science—-of which wo are tempted to say that it ought to be true even if it is not — namely, that all the phenomena of the physical universe are only different manifestations of the various modes of motions of one all-pervading substance — the ether.