The reader will probably be interested in knowing the precise chemical formulæ employed for obtaining these astonishing results. Several such formulæ are given in Dr. Bastian’s book, “The Evolution of Life,” of which the following are samples:
- Sodium silicate, two, or three, drops.
- Ammonium phosphate, four, or six, grains.
- Dilute phosphoric acid, four, or six, drops.
- Distilled water, one fluid ounce.
Another formula is the following:
- Sodium silicate, three drops.
- Liquor ferri pernitratis, eight drops.
- Distilled water, one fluid ounce.
The reader can try the experiment for himself. It should be said, however, that although Dr. Bastian’s results were undoubted, they failed to carry conviction to the scientific world as a whole, since they contended that some experimental error must have crept in, to render these results possible; and it is significant, in this connection, that the same experiments repeated by other men failed to yield the same striking results.
Chemistry, then, enters into practically every field of inquiry—the constitution of human beings, no less than that of metals, earths or distant nebulæ. Everything material in the Universe is composed of elements, of atoms, and these atoms are built-up, as we have seen, of electrons, which are not matter at all, but bundles of energy. No two particles of matter in the world actually touch, or come near to touching one another. It is an interesting thought, when one stops to think of it that, for instance, the steel pillar supporting a “sky-scraper,” upon which rests an enormous weight (the whole of the superstructure) is not really dense and solid, as it appears, but is actually tenuous and shadowy, and that no two of its atoms ever touch one another; they are separated by relatively vast spaces, filled only with the hypothetical “ether.” The whole weight of the building may be said to rest upon nothing,—or at most upon ether, which thus bears its strain!
THE ETHER
And what is this ether? Is it matter in some subtle form, or is it something else? We do not know; certainly it is no form of matter known to us, and its reality has even been called into question of late. Hæckel, as we know, contended (“The Riddle of the Universe”) that the ether must be like some extremely attenuated jelly, and that a sphere of it the size of the earth would probably weigh about 250 pounds! Such crude conceptions have long since been given up. It is far more subtle than this. Is it analogous to the finest gas? Some have thought so; and yet Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the greatest authorities upon the ether, has contended that it is more dense and solid than platinum or gold, and that matter represents mere “bubbles” within this dense medium, capable of moving freely through it. In support of this view, he has cited (in his “Ether of Space”) the enormous gravitational pull of the earth upon the moon, e. g., or of the sun upon the earth. The mass of the earth is approximately 6,000 trillion tons; that of the moon one-eightieth of this. From these data, the gravitational pull of the earth upon the moon can be calculated; and, regarding this, Sir Oliver says:
“A pillar of steel which could transmit this force, provided it could sustain a tension of 40 tons to the square inch, would have a diameter of about 400 miles.... If this force were to be transmitted by a forest of weightless pillars, each a square foot in cross section, with a tension of 30 tons to the square inch throughout, there would have to be 5 million million of them.”
Calculating the gravitational pull of the sun on the earth, in a similar manner, it was calculated that the strain in this case would have to be borne by “a million million round rods or pillars each thirty feet in diameter.”