The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

This solution of the comet's tail does not solve the greater one of the repulsion of the comet itself. The pressure of the electric ions or corpuscles might force the tail away, but a greater electric force from the sun drives off the comet.

Prof. J. J. Thomson and Arrhenius, a Swedish physicist, have by experiments discovered and elaborated the manner and principles on which the ions or corpuscles operate. Arrhenius discovered that these ions were conductors of electricity and why, and Prof. Thomson discovered each corpuscle had the same electric charge as an ion of hydrogen, and that each must be smaller than a hydrogen atom—in fact only a thousandth part of it.

And here for the first time in the world's history science tells us there are bodies smaller than an atom—a thousand times smaller than an atom. We are told an atom is a thousand times smaller than the particles of invisible air we breath; now we have an ion a thousand times smaller than the atom. Surely the scientists have at last reached my theory of the fourth state of matter which I call the electro-magnetic. In fact these ions or corpuscles may be electricity itself or the atoms of electricity which science has at last discovered. And streams of these infinitesimal ions may constitute the swift and invisible currents of electricity which produce all natural phenomena. Prof. Blake, of the Kansas University, says: "Crookes called his cathode streams the fourth form of matter, but first to-day is such a state proven. Now, we must recognize at the beginning of this twentieth century a new form of matter. We have to deal with negatively charged particles so small that they have free paths of motion even among the atoms of substances."

As electric currents have free paths of motion even among the atoms of matter, these ions or corpuscles must be one form of electricity and must be both positive and negative, though the negative ions attract the most attention. I am glad to find science coming to my conclusions as to the fourth state of matter. But instead of calling it electric ions, electrons or Thomson corpuscles, it should be named electro-magnetic ether. It may be that science has at last discovered what electricity is, and that it consists of these infinitesimal corpuscles. Prof. Blake says: "These ions or corpuscles shatter into charged gases the molecules of gases and ionize the gases and make them conductors of electricity; they raise gases to incandescence and make them light-giving sources; they form nuclei about which matter will aggregate and condense; they seem to explain some of the most stupendous and perplexing problems in cosmic physics—such as the cause of the sun's corona, the spread of the comet's tail, the source of the meteors, the fantastic play of the auroras, whence the electric displays of our atmosphere, the after-glow of the setting sun, and the why of the zodiacal light."

He says the corpuscles seem to be solving the big problems of the heavens, and adds: "The corpuscles become luminous when impinged upon by electric waves; and waves of light, which are electro-magnetic disturbances, must move them, and light will be produced and be scattered in all directions as if reflected from minute particles of ordinary matter. This may account for the glow of the nebulae, and the zodiacal light. These corpuscles, being admitted into the moist air of our earth, form nuclei of condensation and drops are formed; and the growth of the high, fleecy clouds finds its beginning around these corpuscles. They also strike our equatorial region; there they are influenced by the earth's magnetic forces and deflected towards the poles, and near the poles they reach gases dense enough to become luminous by their impact and show the fantastic colorings of the aurora.

"Our atmosphere lies, then, like a great insulating sheet between conducting layers—the surface of the ocean and the upper air. In the ether of this intermediate insulating region electric waves may be set up to be propagated as signals in straight lines in all directions. When wireless telegraphy first reached out timidly into space, we all said its currents would leave the earth's surface within a short distance, for they went out from the earth's surface in straight lines; but as they extended farther and farther they seemed to bend around the earth and to follow its curvature. Hertz, who discovered the electric waves which Marconi now so successfully uses in wireless telegraphy, showed us in 1887 that conductors reflected these waves, and the ocean's surface sent them back when they impinged upon it.

"Now, with upper air layers proven conductors, the electric waves must be deflected from above as well and bent downward to follow the earth's curvature."

And thus electric signals, silent but all pervading, will before long circle our globe by their repeated deflections through this great speaking tube around the earth. The mysterious negative corpuscles, more minute than our smallest atoms, thus are themselves the very basis of the practicability of wireless telegraphy, our latest invention. Nay, more, may not these ions or corpuscles be atoms of electricity, and, being a thousand times smaller than atoms of matter, impregnate them with positive and negative force?

Inventors have been endeavoring to send messages over long distances without wires ever since the first tests were made in 1896. Only recently Marconi has succeeded in sending them across the Atlantic, two thousand miles through the air.

The distance to which messages may be transmitted and received depends on the amount of electric energy employed, the frequency of oscillation in the radiating system, the length of the electric waves emitted, the height of the perpendicular wires from the ground, the medium through which the waves are propagated, the sensitiveness of the coherer or receiver, and the precision with which the instruments are adjusted.