A New Era of Thought

by Charles Howard Hinton

The æther then we have imagined to be simply a smooth, thin sheet, not possessed of any definite structure, but excited by real disturbances of the matter on it into vibrations, which carry the effect of these disturbances as light and heat to other portions of matter. Now, it is possible to take an entirely different view of the æther in the case of a plane world.

Let us imagine that, instead of the æther being a smooth sheet serving simply as a support, it is definitely marked and grooved.

Let us imagine these grooves and channels to be very minute, but to be definite and permanent.

Then, let us suppose that, instead of the matter which slides in the æther having attractions and repulsions of its own, that it is quite inert, and has only the properties of inertia.

That is to say, taking a disk or a plane world as a specimen, the whole disk is sliding on the æther in virtue of a certain momentum which it has, and certain portions of its matter fit into the grooves in the æther, and move along those grooves.

The size of the portions is determined by the size of the grooves. And let us call those portions of matter which occupy the breadth of a groove, atoms. Then it is evident that the disk sliding along over the æther, its atoms will move according to the arrangement of the grooves over which the disk slides. If the grooves at any one particular place come close together, there will be a condensation of matter at that place when the disk passes over it; and if the grooves separate, there will be a rarefaction of matter.

If we imagine five particles, each slipping along in its own groove, if the particles are arranged in the form of a regular pentagon, and the grooves are parallel, then these five particles, moving evenly on, will maintain their positions with regard to one another, and a body would exist like a pentagon, lasting as long as the groves remained parallel.

But if, after some distance had been traversed by the disk, and these five particles were brought into a region where one of the grooves tended away from the others, the shape of the pentagon would be destroyed, it would become some irregular figure. And it is easy to see that if the grooves separated, and other grooves came in amongst them, along which other portions of matter were sliding, that the pentagon would disappear as an isolated body, that its constituent matter would be separated, and that its particles would enter into other shapes as constituents of them, and not of the original pentagon.

Thus, in cases of greater complication, an elaborate structure may be supposed to be formed, to alter, and to pass away; its origin, growth, and decay being due, not to any independent motion of the particles constituting it, but to the movement of the disk whereby its portions of matter were brought to regions where there was a particular disposition of the grooves.

Then the nature of the shape would really be determined by the grooves, not by the portions of matter which passed over them—they would become manifest as giving rise to a material form when a disk passed over them, but they would subsist independently of the disk; and if another disk were to pass over the same grooves, exactly the same material structures would spring up as came into being before.