Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/105

Rh of something entirely different. The single electron is the indivisible unit or atomic element of so-called negative electricity, and the neutral chemical atom deprived of one electron is the unit of positive electricity. On this hypothesis, the chemical atom is to be regarded as a microcosm, a sort of a solar system in miniature, the component electrons being capable of vibration relatively to the atomic center of mass. Furthermore, from this point of view it is the electron which is the effective cause of radiation. It alone has a grip on the ether whereby it is able to establish wave motion in the latter.

Dr. Larmor has developed in considerable detail an hypothesis of the nature of an electron which makes it the center or convergence-point of lines of a self-locked ether strain of a torsional type. The notion of an atom merely as a 'center of force' was one familiar to Faraday and much supported by Boscovich and others. The fatal objection to the validity of this notion as originally stated was that it offers no possibility of explaining the inertia of matter. On the electronic hypothesis, the source of all inertia is the inertia of the ether, and until we are able to dissect this last quality into anything simpler than the time-element involved in the production of an ether strain or displacement, we must accept it as an ultimate fact, not more elucidated because we speak of it as the inductance of the electron.

We postulate, therefore, the following ideas: We have to think of the ether as a homogeneous medium in which a strain of some kind, most probably of a rotational type, is possible. This strain appears only under the influence of an appropriate stress called the electric force, and disappears when the force is removed. Hence to create this strain necessitates the expenditure of energy. An electron is a center or convergence-point of lines of permanent ether strain of such nature that it can not release itself. To obtain some idea of the nature of such a structure, let us imagine a flat steel band formed into a ring by welding the ends together. There is then no torsional strain. If, however, we suppose the band cut in one place, one end then given half a turn and the cut ends again welded, we shall have on the band a self-locked twist, which can be displaced on the band, but which can not release itself or be released except by cutting the ring. Hence we see that to make an electron in an ether possessing torsional elasticity would require creative energy, and when made, the electron can not destroy itself except by occupying simultaneously the same place as an electron of opposite type. Every electron extends, therefore, as Faraday said of the atom, throughout the universe, and the properties that we find in the electron are only there because they are first in the universal medium, the ether. Every line of ether or electric strain