Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/302

288 Let us consider the properties of two kinds of molecules, those of oxygen and those of hydrogen.

We can procure specimens of oxygen from very different sources—from the air, from water, from rocks of every geological epoch. The history of these specimens has been very different, and, if, during thousands of years, difference of circumstances could produce difference of properties, these specimens of oxygen would show it.

In like manner we may procure hydrogen from water, from coal, or, as Graham did, from meteoric iron. Take two litres of any specimen of hydrogen, it will combine with exactly one litre of any specimen of oxygen, and will form exactly two litres of the vapor of water.

Now, if, during the whole previous history of either specimen, whether imprisoned in the rocks, flowing in the sea, or careering through unknown regions with the meteorites, any modification of the molecules had taken place, these relations would no longer be preserved.

But we have another and an entirely different method of comparing the properties of molecules. The molecule, though indestructible, is not a hard, rigid body, but is capable of internal movements, and when these are excited it emits rays, the wave-length of which is a measure of the time of vibration of the molecule.

By means of the spectroscope the wave-lengths of different kinds of light may be computed to within one ten-thousandth part. In this way it has been ascertained, not only that molecules taken from every specimen of hydrogen in our laboratories have the same set of periods of vibration, but that light, having the same set of periods of vibration, is emitted from the sun and from the fixed stars.

We are thus assured that molecules of the same nature as those of our hydrogen exist in those distant regions, or at least did exist when the light by which we see them was emitted.

From a comparison of the dimensions of the buildings of the Egyptians with those of the Greeks, it appears that they have a common measure. Hence, even if no ancient author had recorded the fact that the two nations employed the same cubit as a standard of length, we might prove it from the buildings themselves. We should also be justified in asserting that at some time or other a material standard of length must have been carried from one country to the other, or that both countries had obtained their standards from a common source.

But in the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so distant from each other, that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether