Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/527

Rh of the convenience of the method, for a single photograph of the positive rays reveals at a glance the gases in the tube. I now turn to the photograph of the lighter constituents shown in Fig. 3; here we find the lines of helium, of neon (very strong), of argon, and in addition there is a line corresponding to an atomic weight 22, which can not be identified with the line due to any known gas. I thought at first that this line, since its atomic weight is one half that of, must be due to a carbonic acid molecule with a double charge of electricity, and on some of the plates a faint line at 44 could be detected. On passing the gas slowly through tubes immersed in liquid air the line at 44 completely disappeared, while the brightness of the one at 22 was not affected.

The origin of this line presents many points of interest; there are no known gaseous compounds of any of the recognized elements which have this molecular weight. Again, if we accept Mendeleef's periodic law, there is no room for a new element with this atomic weight. The fact that this line is bright in the sample when the neon line is extraordinarily bright, and invisible in the other when the neon is comparatively feeble, suggests that it may possibly be a compound of neon and hydrogen,, though no direct evidence of the combination of these inert gases has hitherto been found. I fig. 3. have two photographs of the