Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/51

Rh give us values which enable us to make such comparisons as the following, suggested by Sir Oliver Lodge: 'The corpuscle is so small as compared to the atom that it, within the atom, may be likened to a mouse in a cathedral,' or 'the corpuscle is to the whole atom as the earth and other planets are to the whole solar system.'

These corpuscles are probably gyrating about each other, or about some common center, with velocities approaching that of light. It seems needful to suppose this, for it is hard to imagine that the enormous velocities observed could be imparted to a corpuscle at the instant it leaves the atom to become a constituent of a cathode ray. It is more reasonable to imagine that the corpuscle already had this velocity and that it flew off at a tangent owing to some influence we do not understand.

This may appear, after all, to be little more than pushing back our questions one stage, so that the position occupied in our thoughts but yesterday by the atom is now occupied by the corpuscle. Quite true, but this is in itself a great step, for the advancement of knowledge consists of nothing else than such pushing back of the boundaries. We dare not assume the end is reached, for there is no proof that the corpuscles are ultimate. They mark the present limit of our imaginings based on experiment, but no one can say but what the next century may possibly witness the shattering of the corpuscles into as many parts as it now appears to take to make an atom.

The question is a legitimate one, do we know any more about these 'new-fangled' corpuscles than we did about the old atoms? The answer is, yes, we probably do. We can go further in our reasoning on the basis of the properties of the corpuscles, and arrive at results which are startling when heard for the first time.

Lenard has shown that the absorption of cathode rays by different substances is simply proportional to the specific gravity of those substances and independent of their chemical properties. It is even independent of the condition of aggregation, i. e., whether the absorbing substance be investigated as a gas, as a liquid or as a solid. This is another strong argument in favor of the view that there is but one 'mother substance' which consists of corpuscles. The corpuscles of the cathode rays must be considered as passing unimpeded through the interstices between the corpuscles of the atom. Lenard calls the corpuscles dynamides and considers them as fields of electrical force with impenetrable central bodies which then constitute actual matter. He calculates the diameter of this center of actual matter as smaller than $$0.3 \times 10^{-10} (= 0.000,000,000,03)$$ millimeter. Applying these results to the case of the metal platinum, one of the most dense of the metals, one of those with the highest specific gravity, he concludes that a solid