Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/249

Rh and oxygen unite they-give out a surprising amount of energy in the form of heat. A single pound of this combination, taken at ordinary temperature, will give out an amount of heat equal to seven million foot pounds of work, or sufficient to raise a ton one half mile high. We know that heat is a vibratory kind of atomic and molecular motion and the rate of this vibratory motion is the measure of the temperature. The question is as to the antecedent of the heat which thus appears. In what form does energy exist in atoms? Up to this time we have been able to trace energy through its various forms until we come to atoms; there it has eluded us. We say 'chemical energy,' but we have no idea how it differs from heat or from gravitative energy. It is a mystery. What form of motion or stress can be thus embodied? In some way it is related to the ether. It seems as if in some unique manner atoms drew from the ether as from a common reservoir, each particular atom capable of holding so much of that kind and no more, like pint cups and quart cups, and this at once transformed into heat at the instant of combination. When combinations of atoms such as water are decomposed, they again absorb the energy spent to separate them, and an atom therefore possesses more available energy than any combination of atoms. It seems as if atoms acted as transformers of ether energy into the ordinary and familiar forms, such as heat and electricity, and vice versa, transforming the latter into ether energy. When we learn this secret we may likely enough be able to artificially extract from the ether as much energy as we need for any purpose, for as I have said, it is inexhaustible, and every cubic inch of space has enough for all the needs of a man for many days. This seems fairly probable, and when the source of atomic energy is discovered, it will rank with the greatest scientific achievements of all time. We shall know more of the ether, of the structure of matter, of the antecedents of most of the energy we are familiar with, as this phenomenon underlies most if not all of the phenomena in all the sciences.

It is yet regarded as a mechanical paradox that a medium without friction should have waves set up in it by molecular vibration, and little is known of the physical relations existing between matter and ether, by which electrical and magnetic phenomena are produced, and one may say that of the nature of ether we know nothing. Think of the amazing extent of it. As limitless as space itself, with no break or separation of its parts, not made up of particles like matter, but completely filling space and so constituted that any movement of a particle of matter in some way affects the whole body of it to the remotest part of the visible universe.

The nature of gravitation is as unknown as the nature of life itself. We know how it acts, and that this action is millions of times