Page:Light waves and their uses.djvu/180

162 friction against the side of the opening, as the puff of smoke passes out, 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 we 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.