THE ROMANCES OF SCIENCE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11093, 2 June 1914, Page 4

THE ROMANCES OF SCIENCE.

THE ETHER OF SPACE,

(By W. JOSEPH SHOWALTER.) In a charming address upon this technical subject, Sir Oliver Lodge brings out some wonderful facts about our universe He says that the force with which the moon is held to its Orbit would be great enough to tear asunder a steel rod four hundred miles in diameter, each square inch of whose crosi-section could sustain a pull of thirty tons before breaking. And yet it is held there by that invisible force Wo "call gravity, which we overcome in slight measure every time we toss a ball into the air or climb a stairs. He calls attention to the statement made by Lord Kelvin concerning the size of all the stars of the heavens. Our sun is 1,200,000 times as large as our earth, and yet Eelvin estimates that the matter in all the stars, put together, would make a thousand million of our suns.

Sir Oliver, in trying to illustrate what ether is, says that Lord Salisbury once declared it to be little more than nominative case of the verb to undulate. 'But he finds it very much more, than that. Ho quotes Maxwell's beautiful statement that space no longer '•' will be regarded as waste places in the universe which the Creator has not seen lit to fill with symbols of the manifold order of his kingdom. We shall find it to be already full of this Wonderful medium (ethor); so full that no human power can rcmovo it from the smallest portion of space, or duco the slightest flaw in its infiuite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star, and, when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog star, the ethor ""receives the impulses of these vibrations, and, after carrying them in its immense bosom for several years, delivers them, iu duo course, regular order and full tale" to the men who operate our spectroscopes. One theory of ether is that it is of much denser form of matter than iron or platinum—so dense that gold or lead seems like a gossamer web of a filmy mist iu comparison. Another is that all Solids arc made from it, iu spite of the seeming impossibility of making things wo can see out ot things we cann6t see. A wheel of spokes, transparent or permeable- to matter when standing still; becomes opaque to matter when rapidly moving _; a silken cord becomes rigid when swinging rapidly from a pulley; a flexible chain can be made to stand on end when spinning rapidly: ft jet of water will resist the cut of the keenest sabre when the water has sufficient speed; a spinning disc of soft iron will cut the hardest steel armour: a spring balance may be made of rigid bodies in spinning motion. From all this it is concluded that if Other can be sent ginning rapidly enough it would exhibit the same pro-Weo-ties as matter; but how can it,be set spinning? Matter has no grip upon it, and cannot take hold of it. Sir i Oliver Lodge has spun a steel disc a ' yard in diameter four thousand times ! a minute, and still he could get no sign (that it caused the ether to move. I 'But a wav has been found to move I the elusive substance electricity will

causa it to vibrate. We arc using this knowledge every day in our hospitals. The Bii cm en stoppage of an electric charge generates certain waves of cthori and in tbo hospitals we call those i waves X-rays. It is not speed, but the 6iuldeu oheckiug of speed, that causoa X-rays. I Whate-or the *ti*,xY space may bo, I and whatever wonderful and elusive i qualities it may posseK, we know now \ of a truth that it is the faithful messenger which conveys our light from I the aiti.i; that it is the bearer of our messages through the air by vr'v ■)•■>«'■• telegraph; that it bears a wonderful relation to electricity, and that invisible, unfoolable and imtangible as it is, it yet is something without whose pre'Oneo'tho earth would be wrapped in an eternal darkness of midnight, and ali life on it would perish, becauso on its wings would no longer come the Ktinshiuo that gives us our rains, makes our crons to grow, and keeps the wheels of civilisation a-turning.