Through all these explanations, and others too elaborate and too technical for these pages, he had spoken in the clear, emphatic way which is characteristic of men who deal with abstruse subjects, and desire, from long habit, to present them with the maximum of clearness and the minimum of words. His speech is incisive, the utterances of an energetic and concentrated mind. Over a cup of tea upstairs, however, he spoke more slowly and dwelt with interest upon some of the many strange results which have already met his eyes in the region of −200° Centigrade.
“As we approach the zero point of absolute temperature,” said he, “we seem to be nearing what I can only call the death of matter. Pure metals undergo molecular changes which cannot yet be defined, but which entirely alter their characteristics as we know them. Tensile strength, electrical resistance, in fact, the whole character of the metal as we are acquainted with it, appears to change. At −200°, for instance, iron becomes as good an electrical conductor as copper, while it is more than probable that at the zero of absolute temperature, if not before, the electrical resistance of all metals reaches its zero point. The alloys do not follow the same rule, being much less affected. Carbon is a strange exception, its electrical resistance increasing with cold and decreasing with heat. The effect upon colors is also remarkable, and opens up a wide field for experiment and investigation. In fact, the most marked and immediate effect of my experiments will appear, I think, in the field of magneto-optics. You have seen a red oxide of mercury turn yellow when cooled to the temperature of liquid oxygen, and regain its original color upon returning to the temperature of the air. In the same way, sulphur becomes white. Bichromate of potash becomes also white. A solution of iodine in alcohol becomes colorless, as does ferric chloride, a deep red at the temperature of the air. They all regain their colors upon returning to the ordinary temperature. At these low temperatures chemical action ceases, as you have seen. I supposed the rule was invariable, but found that a photographic plate placed in liquid oxygen was still acted upon by energy from the outside, and at even −200° C. was sensitive to light.
“The effect upon bacterial life is also not what one would expect. Though it is destroyed by boiling in water, a temperature of 100° C., it can still endure unaffected a degree of cold much greater in proportion. I have submitted putrefying blood, milk, seeds, etc., for the space of an hour, to a temperature of −182° C., but found that they afterwards went on putrefying or germinating as the case happened to be. This is interesting in one way, as it gives color to Lord Kelvin’s suggestion that the first life might have been brought to this planet by a seed-bearing meteorite, though it does not explain,” he added with a smile, “how the meteorite was originally equipped with seeds. It shows, however, that spores may live upon a planet through long periods of low temperature. In the phenomena of diminishing electrical resistance and its final disappearance, I look for much new light upon the mystery of electricity itself. The changes in the characteristics of metals already observed enlock lessons whose scope we have not yet begun to measure. In fact,” said he, “for a long time to come I shall confine myself to the many fields of research which the temperatures already attained have opened up.”
Concerning the zero of absolute temperature, Professor Dewar was disinclined to theorize. As to its being the temperature of inter-stellar space, he has not yet come to any final conclusion, though he expressed the view that the strange white and shining night clouds which have puzzled the astronomers were composed of carbonic acid gas frozen solid. Nor does he yet, despite the temperatures reached, see how the zero is to be attained. He, like the Arctic explorers of the past, has reached a point beyond which no appliances of modern science can carry him. The mysteries which cluster about this point are so many, however, that the efforts to reach it will be untiring from this time forth. That its discovery will be a key to many unsolved problems in electricity, in matter, in light, and the great inscrutable mystery of life itself, is not to be doubted. This is an age of constant change in scientific conceptions and traditions, every marked advance in any one science tending to cause more or less of a readjustment of existing views in every other. Science has long been editing the Book of Genesis with an unsparing pen, and with the attainment of the zero of absolute temperature the command “Let there be light” may take on a meaning which the profoundest philosopher or scientist of the present time cannot remotely conceive.
THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH.
By Gilbert Parker.
No one ever visited at it except the little chemist, the avocat and Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only one on terms of intimacy with its owner, an old seigneur who for many years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden. At rare intervals he might be seen sitting in the large stone porch which gave overweighted dignity to the house, itself not very large. An air of mystery surrounded the place: in summer the grass was rank, the trees seemed huddled together in gloom about the house, the vines appeared to ooze on the walls, and at one end, where the window-shutters were always closed and barred, a great willow drooped and shivered; in winter the stone walls showed naked and grim among the gaunt trees and furtive shrubs.
None who ever saw the seigneur could forget him—a tall figure with stooping shoulders; a pale, deeply-lined, clean-shaven face; and a forehead painfully white, with blue veins showing; the eyes handsome, penetrative, brooding, and made indescribably sorrowful by the dark skin around them. There were those in Pontiac, such as the curé, who remembered when the seigneur was constantly to be seen in the village; and then another person was with him always, a young, tall youth, his son. They were fond and proud of each other, and were religious and good citizens in a high-bred, punctilious way. Then the seigneur was all health and stalwart strength. But one day a rumor went abroad that the seigneur had quarrelled with his son because of the wife of Farette the miller. No one outside knew if the thing was true, but Julie, the miller’s wife, seemed rather to plume herself that she had made a stir in her little world. Yet the curious habitants came to know that the young man had gone, and after a good many years his having once lived there was almost a tradition. But the little chemist remembered whenever he set foot inside the tall porch; the avocat was kept in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to time; the curé never forgot, because when the young man went he lost not one of his flock, but two; and Medallion, knowing something of the story, had it before him with gradually increasing frequency; besides, he had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller’s wife. He knew that the closed, barred rooms were the young man’s; and he knew, also, that the old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he never even named to himself.