Page:Modern Views on Matter.djvu/34

 26 liable to processes of change, and in that sense to be a transient phenomenon.

Somehow, we might conjecture, by some means at present unknown, it takes its rise: electrons of opposite sign crystallizing or falling together, perhaps at first into a manifestly unstable form; these forms then pass on from one into another, going through a series of transitional states, and abiding for a long time in those configurations which are most stable; giving a process of evolution inconceivably slow in its later stages, comparatively rapid in its early ones: and yet not so rapid, even in a substance like radium, but that its life as such may be reckoned by thousands of years.

If such a transitory existence is ever established for the forms of matter as we know them, it by no means follows that the process goes on in one direction only, or that the total amount of matter in the universe is subject to diminution. There may be regeneration as well as degeneration.

The total amount of radio-activity in a substance is singularly constant. If the radio-active portion is removed, a fresh supply makes its appearance at a measured rate, that rate being expressible by a decreasing geometrical progression, and being precisely equal to the rate at which the power of the removed portion decays.

Whether the total amount of matter in the universe is constant likewise, as much disappearing at one end by resolution into electrons as is formed at the other end by their aggregating together, is at present quite unknown; and indeed it is clear that we have now become far immersed in the region of speculation.