SCIENCE AND BUSINESS

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 114, 11 November 1919, Page 6

SCIENCE AND BUSINESS

Modern man is, of course, mainly concorned with making a living—bare or, if possible, something more—and it comes always as a surprise if the course of practical events is occasionally disturbed by the interference of some person or/ body insisting upon the importance of a pure theory. A remarkable instance is •given by Sir Frank Dyson's reported demonstration of a new phenomenon observed during a solar eclipse in May. He told the Royal Society about it,- and big scientists —-not the astronomers merely, but leading physicists—are displaying as much disturbance of mind as the average man would do if the world-war began all over again. In truth, it is a most serious matter for the scientist, for the foundations of his belief have been rudely shaken. Newton's lawd relating to gravitation have stood for two and a-half centuries as amongst the most immutable in the whole of physical theory, except perMps those laid down by the same phiU jpher to express the rules that govern motion. The laws of gravitation have been challenged to explain apparent discrepancies, but hitherto the charge of fallibility has been unproved. It is as serious a matter from the scientific viewpoint as. if Sir Oliver Lodge had demonstrated a practicable means by which a hardheaded merchant could walk back and forth through the door that leads into the spirit world.

A little-known German philosopher, Einstein, had in advance laid down the' principle that Dyson purports to have confirmed by observation—that the ether of the physicist is not quite whatv the physicist has made- it out to be. Ether has never been seen, nor manipulated in any way. In the first place, it. was a figment of the imagination, invented to explain phenomena that could not exist, without it—light, electricity and magnetism, life itself. And as the years have gone by this philosophical conception, which has none of the properties of the matter that the physicists are concerned with, has more and more emphatically established its reality and its ascertainable conditions. It is a singular negation of most of the qualities appreciable by material means, yet certain of them are inherent in it, and these have repeatedly been exposed by research students to the most stringent tests.: Among these tests is an effort to discover finally whether the ether is displaced .by tho motion of' material bodies (experimentally this has never ■been demonstrated) or distorted by such forces as gravitation. Astronomical observations, which offer on such occasions as solar eclipses the simplest opportunities for obtaining evidence on the question, have failed to give any definite verdict prior to the occasion reported by Dyson. He, it is now stated, has convinced one of the most august scientific bodies in tho world that evidence of such distortion exists. As a side issue, it now appears that light has a species of " ponderability " or weight. That is, the transmission of light, ordinarily assumed to travel in direct lines only, can be diverted from its straight course by the influence-of gravity. Light itself, it is now generally .accepted, has of itself no substance, and is merely a form of wave energy in the ether; so that the diversion of light by gravitation is a sign that the ether has been disturbed by that force. Indeed, it is evident from the circumstances of Dyson's revelation that it is an aberration of light that has led to the whole sensation, and the corollary is the proof of the theorem.*-

What has all this to do with practical affairs? A great deal. The world of to-day lias great traffic with the ether. As long as we were1 content with such etheric disturbances as the light that flows from simple sources, etheric theories were of only scientific interest. But man now deliberately uses the ether for his purposes. Wireless telegraphy, and indeed all electrical work, are dependent upon it, and knowledge of its properties is more and more essential to progress along that line of human development which we are pleased to call civilisation. The scientist is far ahead y»f the busy world of bread and butter; but where he goes the artisan follows.