WORLD GOVERNED BY ETHER

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 128, 1 June 1908, Page 6

WORLD GOVERNED BY ETHER

EVERY LAW OF SCIENCE CHALLENGED.

"Ether is a fluid which permeates everything. It is 'omnipresent.' It regulates the smallest chemical alteration. Consequently it regulates _ the largest and most complex alterations. Hence it regulates all life. It is, therefore, ' omnipotent.''V _ , ' This was the conclusion to which the four lectures which entranced audiences at the London. Institution were brought on March 26 by Mr Frederick Hovendeh, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.M.S. The lectures have pictured an entirely new conception or the principles of Nature, and have run counter to all preconceived reasonings of physicists. They have been illustrated by many marvellous experiments, designed to show that electricity, heat, and ether are the same thing—a fluid which, if properly illuminated, is visible to the naked eye. Some of the experiments were made with the help of a box known as an analyser. In this box the invisible air was made_ visible, and ether was seen pouring out in a rising stream from the professor's finged-tips, ascending also from a heated glass rod, and from an electric wire. Reactions of the ether on liquid and gaseous molecules were shown experimentally to be responsible for heat and cold. •Low temperature merely means, according to Mr, Hovenden, molecules nearly devoid of ether. "Chemists and physicists cannot see this very simple issue," he said. "The scientific world generally will not' allow the existence of. this fluid. But I feel that my experiments are so conclusive j because they have made the fluid ether visible, that I may venture to challenge the most eminent authorities.

"So I shall challenge Lord Rayleigh, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor J. J. Thompson, and all the learned metaphysical host to /explain the experiments in other terms than I have done. In making this challenge lam aware of the responsibility I take; but I regard it as a sacred duty. "I say that every organic being is foyerned by the flow of ether. You, he King, and I were all formed by the same means as the chicken was formed, arid when this is_ understood a new order of thought will arise which will add materially to the happiness of mankind. , "We want a system to explain the millions of forms we find in nature,

and it is a sublime idea that every one of them is regulated by this subtle force, this ether or spirit, omnipresent and omnipotent—a power without which animal and vegetable life would cease to exist, without which there would be no water and no fire, and all would be frozen."