NATURE OF THE AETHER

Evening Star, Issue 19712, 12 November 1927, Page 13

NATURE OF THE AETHER

MATTER AND ENERGY SIR 0. LODGE’S LECTURE In connection with tlio recent meeting of tbo British Association, Sir Oliver Lodge delivered a “citizens’ lecture ” on ‘ Energy.’ After explaining the meaning of the scientific conception of energy, ho said that all energy seemed to be going from matter to aether, if we accepted that as the truth, we would bo forced to ask the fundamental question whether all energy did not exist in the aether. Wo bad lung known that the energy of light was there, but we had not thought that the energy of a Hying projectile was in the aether; but wo bad learnt that matter was composed of electrical charges;- so wc saw that while everything once seemed to_ belong to matter, which was the basis of nineteenth century physics, including even the region of lilc and mind, the twentieth century had begun a revolution with the electrical theory of matter, which the theory of relativity would clinch. “ Wo shall find that th cfnndaincntal thing in the material universe,” he said, “is the aether in its various forms and energy, and that the sun and stars and planets arc only the latest recognised manifestation of an unsuspected form of energy. What the connection is between aethcric energy on the one hand and life and mind on the oilier is a problem as yet beyond the scope even of twentieth century science. I doubt not that in duo time the dawning of a solution will appear, but it must remain as a problem for posterity.” LIFE AND ENERGY. Tentatively, ho did not think that life was one of the forms of energy; it seemed to him a guiding and_ directing principle fro moutsidc, which interacted with the material or physical universe,

but was not of it. Ho apprehended that the universe must contain many things beyond the scope of those that we studied in physical science. His notion of the physical universe was that it consisted of an extraordinarily dense and substantial entity, which we might call a fluid, although it was unlikely any fluid that we ever encountered, absolutely continuous and omnipresent, permeating everything, and extending in a boundless manner throughout space. The substance made no appeal to any of our senses, and was a matter of inference. Nevertheless, wc knew that it could transmit waves at a measurable pace, that it was the'scat.of electric and magnetic fields, and that it was, lie felt sure, the vehicle of gravitation. Ho apprehended that all of it was in a violent state of spinning or rotational or vortex motion, that it was the seat of an energy, ol an immensity that humanity could not imagine. All our puny energies were but a froth or ridiculously minute traction of 'this portentous supply. MINUTE CAVITIES. Ho imagined the uniform continuity to be interrupted here and there by an extremely minute cavity, in equilibrium under gigantic pressure. That cavity was the electron, spinning violently, and having a property which we called “inertia” highly developed, in addition to a correlative strain round it supplementary to that which -surrounded the hollow. Wc might call the one electron and the other proton; minute centres of strain and energy capable of identification and locomotion. They tended to fall together, and began to agglomerate in clusters and units. They were furiously energetic, moving with tremendous speed, the clusters they formed were of enormous size,' and the strain which had been sot up in their formation had a slight rosidual but inevitable effect called gravitation. They generated waves in aether through which they moved, which was no longer undisturbed or placid, like a sleeping top, but began to display its latent energy' in a furious blaze of radiation.

As long as the particles wore in an excessive state of locomotion they might keep fairly separate, hut if their locomotive energy subsided they would begin to revolve round one another and become atoms of matter; and these would magnetically group themselves into molecules and substances with which hero in this comparatively quiet and nnnergetio part of space wo were familiar in daily life, and indeed in our own bodies. LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE. Having likened the physical universe to a wound up gramophone, which when it was allowed to run down exhibited its stored partly as motion and partly in the emission of waives—which tho ancients seemed to have called the music of the spheres—he said there were indications that the universe had always existed, was , still a going concern, and perhaps would never run down. Could it be true that the universe was like a running down clock, and was there anything that could wind it up again? The answer was; “ Yes, Intelligence,” In our physical science we had left that out. But in so far as the physical, ignored life and mind, it could not ho complete as a philosophy. When a philosophy which ignored nothing existed, wo .should he able to give scientific answers to problems concerning which we were now only beginning to be able to put questions.