The New Physics and Its Evolution Part 16

In spite of uncertainties which are not yet entirely removed, it cannot be denied that many experiments render it probable that in radioactive bodies we find ourselves witnessing veritable transformations of matter.

Professor Rutherford, Professor Soddy, and several other physicists, have come to regard these phenomena in the following way. A radioactive body is composed of atoms which have little stability, and are able to detach themselves spontaneously from the parent substance, and at the same time to divide themselves into two essential component parts, the negative electron and its residue the positive ion. The first-named const.i.tutes the beta, and the second the alpha rays.

The emanation is certainly composed of alpha ions with a few molecules agglomerated round them. Professor Rutherford has, in fact, demonstrated that the emanation is charged with positive electricity; and this emanation may, in turn, be destroyed by giving birth to new bodies.

After the loss of the atoms which are carried off by the radiation, the remainder of the body acquires new properties, but it may still be radioactive, and again lose atoms. The various stages that we meet with in the evolution of the radioactive substance or of its emanation, correspond to the various degrees of atomic disaggregation.

Professors Rutherford and Soddy have described them clearly in the case of uranium and radium. As regards thorium the results are less satisfactory. The evolution should continue until a stable atomic condition is finally reached, which, because of this stability, is no longer radioactive. Thus, for instance, radium would finally be transformed into helium.[40]

[Footnote 40: This opinion, no doubt formed when Sir William Ramsay's discovery of the formation of helium from the radium emanation was first made known, is now less tenable. The latest theory is that the alpha particle is in fact an atom of helium, and that the final transformation product of radium and the other radioactive substances is lead. Cf. Rutherford, op. cit. pa.s.sim.--ED.]

It is possible, by considerations a.n.a.logous to those set forth above in other cases, to arrive at an idea of the total number of particles per second expelled by one gramme of radium; Professor Rutherford in his most recent evaluation finds that this number approaches 2.5 x 10^{11}.[41] By calculating from the atomic weight the number of atoms probably contained in this gramme of radium, and supposing each particle liberated to correspond to the destruction of one atom, it is found that one half of the radium should disappear in 1280 years;[42]

and from this we may conceive that it has not yet been possible to discover any sensible loss of weight. Sir W. Ramsay and Professor Soddy attained a like result by endeavouring to estimate the ma.s.s of the emanation by the quant.i.ty of helium produced.

[Footnote 41: See _Radioactive Transformations_ (p. 251). Professor Rutherford says that "each of the alpha ray products present in one gram of radium product (_sic_) expels 6.2 x 10^{10} alpha particles per second." He also remarks on "the experimental difficulty of accurately determining the number of alpha particles expelled from radium per second."--ED.]

[Footnote 42: See Rutherford, op. cit. p. 150.--ED.]

If radium transforms itself in such a way that its activity does not persist throughout the ages, it loses little by little the provision of energy it had in the beginning, and its properties furnish no valid argument to oppose to the principle of the conservation of energy. To put everything right, we have only to recognise that radium possessed in the potential state at its formation a finite quant.i.ty of energy which is consumed little by little. In the same manner, a chemical system composed, for instance, of zinc and sulphuric acid, also contains in the potential state energy which, if we r.e.t.a.r.d the reaction by any suitable arrangement--such as by amalgamating the zinc and by const.i.tuting with its elements a battery which we cause to act on a resistance--may be made to exhaust itself as slowly as one may desire.

There can, therefore, be nothing in any way surprising in the fact that a combination which, like the atomic combination of radium, is not stable--since it disaggregates itself,--is capable of spontaneously liberating energy, but what may be a little astonis.h.i.+ng, at first sight, is the considerable amount of this energy.

M. Curie has calculated directly, by the aid of the calorimeter, the quant.i.ty of energy liberated, measuring it entirely in the form of heat. The disengagement of heat accounted for in a grain of radium is uniform, and amounts to 100 calories per hour. It must therefore be admitted that an atom of radium, in disaggregating itself, liberates 30,000 times more energy than a molecule of hydrogen when the latter combines with an atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water.

We may ask ourselves how the atomic edifice of the active body can be constructed, to contain so great a provision of energy. We will remark that such a question might be asked concerning cases known from the most remote antiquity, like that of the chemical systems, without any satisfactory answer ever being given. This failure surprises no one, for we get used to everything--even to defeat.

When we come to deal with a new problem we have really no right to show ourselves more exacting; yet there are found persons who refuse to admit the hypothesis of the atomic disaggregation of radium because they cannot have set before them a detailed plan of that complex whole known to us as an atom.

The most natural idea is perhaps the one suggested by comparison with those astronomical phenomena where our observation most readily allows us to comprehend the laws of motion. It corresponds likewise to the tendency ever present in the mind of man, to compare the infinitely small with the infinitely great. The atom may be regarded as a sort of solar system in which electrons in considerable numbers gravitate round the sun formed by the positive ion. It may happen that certain of these electrons are no longer retained in their orbit by the electric attraction of the rest of the atom, and may be projected from it like a small planet or comet which escapes towards the stellar s.p.a.ces. The phenomena of the emission of light compels us to think that the corpuscles revolve round the nucleus with extreme velocities, or at the rate of thousands of billions of evolutions per second. It is easy to conceive from this that, notwithstanding its lightness, an atom thus const.i.tuted may possess an enormous energy.[43]

[Footnote 43: This view of the case has been made very clear by M.

Gustave le Bon in _L'evolution de la Matiere_ (Paris, 1906). See especially pp. 36-52, where the amount of the supposed intra-atomic energy is calculated.--ED.]

Other authors imagine that the energy of the corpuscles is princ.i.p.ally due to the extremely rapid rotations of those elements on their own axes. Lord Kelvin lately drew up on another model the plan of a radioactive atom capable of ejecting an electron with a considerable _vis viva_. He supposes a spherical atom formed of concentric layers of positive and negative electricity disposed in such a way that its external action is null, and that, nevertheless, the force emanated from the centre may be repellent for certain values when the electron is within it.

The most prudent physicists and those most respectful to established principles may, without any scruples, admit the explanation of the radioactivity of radium by a dislocation of its molecular edifice. The matter of which it is const.i.tuted evolves from an admittedly unstable initial state to another stable one. It is, in a way, a slow allotropic transformation which takes place by means of a mechanism regarding which, in short, we have no more information than we have regarding other a.n.a.logous transformations. The only astonishment we can legitimately feel is derived from the thought that we are suddenly and deeply penetrating to the very heart of things.

But those persons who have a little more hardihood do not easily resist the temptation of forming daring generalisations. Thus it will occur to some that this property, already discovered in many substances where it exists in more or less striking degree, is, with differences of intensity, common to all bodies, and that we are thus confronted by a phenomenon derived from an essential quality of matter. Quite recently, Professor Rutherford has demonstrated in a fine series of experiments that the alpha particles of radium cease to ionize gases when they are made to lose their velocity, but that they do not on that account cease to exist. It may follow that many bodies emit similar particles without being easily perceived to do so; since the electric action, by which this phenomenon of radioactivity is generally manifested, would, in this case, be but very weak.

If we thus believe radioactivity to be an absolutely general phenomenon, we find ourselves face to face with a new problem. The transformation of radioactive bodies can no longer be a.s.similated to allotropic transformations, since thus no final form could ever be attained, and the disaggregation would continue indefinitely up to the complete dislocation of the atom.[44] The phenomenon might, it is true, have a duration of perhaps thousands of millions of centuries, but this duration is but a minute in the infinity of time, and matters little. Our habits of mind, if we adopt such a conception, will be none the less very deeply disturbed. We shall have to abandon the idea so instinctively dear to us that matter is the most stable thing in the universe, and to admit, on the contrary, that all bodies whatever are a kind of explosive decomposing with extreme slowness. There is in this, whatever may have been said, nothing contrary to any of the principles on which the science of energetics rests; but an hypothesis of this nature carries with it consequences which ought in the highest degree to interest the philosopher, and we all know with what alluring boldness M. Gustave Le Bon has developed all these consequences in his work on the evolution of matter.[45]

[Footnote 44: This is the main contention of M. Gustave Le Bon in his work last quoted.--ED.]

[Footnote 45: See last note.--ED.]

There is hardly a physicist who does not at the present day adopt in one shape or another the ballistic hypothesis. All new facts are co-ordinated so happily by it, that it more and more satisfies our minds; but it cannot be a.s.serted that it forces itself on our convictions with irresistible weight. Another point of view appeared more plausible and simple at the outset, when there seemed reason to consider the energy radiated by radioactive bodies as inexhaustible.

It was thought that the source of this energy was to be looked for without the atom, and this idea may perfectly well he maintained at the present day.

Radium on this hypothesis must be considered as a transformer borrowing energy from the external medium and returning it in the form of radiation. It is not impossible, even, to admit that the energy which the atom of radium withdraws from the surrounding medium may serve to keep up, not only the heat emitted and its complex radiation, but also the dissociation, supposed to be endothermic, of this atom.

Such seems to be the idea of M. Debierne and also of M. Sagnac. It does not seem to accord with the experiments that this borrowed energy can be a part of the heat of the ambient medium; and, indeed, such a phenomenon would be contrary to the principle of Carnot if we wished (though we have seen how disputable is this extension) to extend this principle to the phenomena which are produced in the very bosom of the atom.

We may also address ourselves to a more n.o.ble form of energy, and ask ourselves whether we are not, for the first time, in presence of a transformation of gravitational energy. It may be singular, but it is not absurd, to suppose that the unit of ma.s.s of radium is not attached to the earth with the same intensity as an inert body. M. Sagnac has commenced some experiments, as yet unpublished, in order to study the laws of the fall of a fragment of radium. They are necessarily very delicate, and the energetic and ingenious physicist has not yet succeeded in finis.h.i.+ng them.[46] Let us suppose that he succeeds in demonstrating that the intensity of gravity is less for radium than for the platinum or the copper of which the pendulums used to ill.u.s.trate the law of Newton are generally made; it would then be possible still to think that the laws of universal attraction are perfectly exact as regards the stars, and that ponderability is really a particular case of universal attraction, while in the case of radioactive bodies part of the gravitational energy is transformed in the course of its evolution and appears in the form of active radiation.

[Footnote 46: In reality M. Sagnac operated in the converse manner. He took two equal _weights_ of a salt of radium and a salt of barium, which he made oscillate one after the other in a torsion balance. Had the durations of oscillation been different, it might be concluded that the mechanical ma.s.s is not the same for radium as for barium.]

But for this explanation to be admitted, it would evidently need to be supported by very numerous facts. It might, no doubt, appear still more probable that the energy borrowed from the external medium by radium is one of those still unknown to us, but of which a vague instinct causes us to suspect the existence around us. It is indisputable, moreover, that the atmosphere in all directions is furrowed with active radiations; those of radium may be secondary radiations reflected by a kind of resonance phenomenon.

Certain experiments by Professors Elster and Geitel, however, are not favourable to this point of view. If an active body be surrounded by a radioactive envelope, a screen should prevent this body from receiving any impression from outside, and yet there is no diminution apparent in the activity presented by a certain quant.i.ty of radium when it is lowered to a depth of 800 metres under ground, in a region containing a notable quant.i.ty of pitchblende. These negative results are, on the other hand, so many successes for the partisans of the explanation of radioactivity by atomic energy.

CHAPTER X

THE ETHER AND MATTER

-- 1. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE ETHER AND MATTER

For some time past it has been the more or less avowed ambition of physicists to construct with the particles of ether all possible forms of corporeal existence; but our knowledge of the inmost nature of things has. .h.i.therto seemed too limited for us to attempt such an enterprise with any chance of success. The electronic hypothesis, however, which has furnished a satisfactory image of the most curious phenomena produced in the bosom of matter, has also led to a more complete electromagnetic theory of the ether than that of Maxwell, and this twofold result has given birth to the hope of arriving by means of this hypothesis at a complete co-ordination of the physical world.

The phenomena whose study may bring us to the very threshold of the problem, are those in which the connections between matter and the ether appear clearly and in a relatively simple manner. Thus in the phenomena of emission, ponderable matter is seen to give birth to waves which are transmitted by the ether, and by the phenomena of absorption it is proved that these waves disappear and excite modifications in the interior of the material bodies which receive them. We here catch in operation actual reciprocal actions and reactions between the ether and matter. If we could thoroughly comprehend these actions, we should no doubt be in a position to fill up the gap which separates the two regions separately conquered by physical science.

In recent years numerous researches have supplied valuable materials which ought to be utilized by those endeavouring to construct a theory of radiation. We are, perhaps, still ill informed as to the phenomena of luminescence in which undulations are produced in a complex manner, as in the case of a stick of moist phosphorus which is luminescent in the dark, or in that of a fluorescent screen. But we are very well acquainted with emission or absorption by incandescence, where the only transformation is that of calorific into radiating energy, or _vice versa_. It is in this case alone that can be correctly applied the celebrated demonstration by which Kirchhoff established, by considerations borrowed from thermodynamics, the proportional relations between the power of emission and that of absorption.

In treating of the measurement of temperature, I have already pointed out the experiments of Professors Lummer and Pringsheim and the theoretical researches of Stephan and Professor Wien. We may consider that at the present day the laws of the radiation of dark bodies are tolerably well known, and, in particular, the manner in which each elementary radiation increases with the temperature. A few doubts, however, subsist with respect to the law of the distribution of energy in the spectrum. In the case of real and solid bodies the results are naturally less simple than in that of dark bodies. One side of the question has been specially studied on account of its great practical interest, that is to say, the fact that the relation of the luminous energy to the total amount radiated by a body varies with the nature of this last; and the knowledge of the conditions under which this relation becomes most considerable led to the discovery of incandescent lighting by gas in the Auer-Welsbach mantle, and to the subst.i.tution for the carbon thread in the electric light bulb of a filament of osmium or a small rod of magnesium, as in the Nernst lamp.

Careful measurements effected by M. Fery have furnished, in particular, important information on the radiation of the white oxides; but the phenomena noticed have not yet found a satisfactory interpretation. Moreover, the radiation of calorific origin is here accompanied by a more or less important luminescence, and the problem becomes very complex.

In the same way that, for the purpose of knowing the const.i.tution of matter, it first occurred to us to investigate gases, which appear to be molecular edifices built on a more simple and uniform plan than solids, we ought naturally to think that an examination of the conditions in which emission and absorption are produced by gaseous bodies might be eminently profitable, and might perhaps reveal the mechanism by which the relations between the molecule of the ether and the molecule of matter might be established.

Unfortunately, if a gas is not absolutely incapable of emitting some sort of rays by simple heat, the radiation thus produced, no doubt by reason of the slightness of the ma.s.s in play, always remains of moderate intensity. In nearly all the experiments, new energies of chemical or electrical origin come into force. On incandescence, luminescence is superposed; and the advantage which might have been expected from the simplicity of the medium vanishes through the complication of the circ.u.mstances in which the phenomenon is produced.

Professor Pringsheim has succeeded, in certain cases, in finding the dividing line between the phenomena of luminescence and that of incandescence. Thus the former takes a predominating importance when the gas is rendered luminous by electrical discharges, and chemical transformations, especially, play a preponderant role in the emission of the spectrum of flames which contain a saline vapour. In all the ordinary experiments of spectrum a.n.a.lysis the laws of Kirchhoff cannot therefore be considered as established, and yet the relation between emission and absorption is generally tolerably well verified. No doubt we are here in presence of a kind of resonance phenomenon, the gaseous atoms entering into vibration when solicited by the ether by a motion identical with the one they are capable of communicating to it.

If we are not yet very far advanced in the study of the mechanism of the production of the spectrum,[47] we are, on the other hand, well acquainted with its const.i.tution. The extreme confusion which the spectra of the lines of the gases seemed to present is now, in great part at least, cleared up. Balmer gave some time since, in the case of the hydrogen spectrum, an empirical formula which enabled the rays discovered later by an eminent astronomer, M. Deslandres, to be represented; but since then, both in the cases of line and band spectra, the labours of Professor Rydberg, of M. Deslandres, of Professors Kayzer and Runge, and of M. Thiele, have enabled us to comprehend, in their smallest details, the laws of the distribution of lines and bands.

[Footnote 47: Many theories as to the cause of the lines and bands of the spectrum have been put forward since this was written, among which that of Professor Stark (for which see _Physikalische Zeitschrift_ for 1906, pa.s.sim) is perhaps the most advanced. That of M. Jean Becquerel, which would attribute it to the vibration within the atom of both negative and positive electrons, also deserves notice. A popular account of this is given in the _Athenaeum_ of 20th April 1907.--ED.]

These laws are simple, but somewhat singular. The radiations emitted by a gas cannot be compared to the notes to which a sonorous body gives birth, nor even to the most complicated vibrations of any elastic body. The number of vibrations of the different rays are not the successive multiples of one and the same number, and it is not a question of a fundamental radiation and its harmonics, while--and this is an essential difference--the number of vibrations of the radiation tend towards a limit when the period diminishes infinitely instead of constantly increasing, as would be the case with the vibrations of sound.

Thus the a.s.similation of the luminous to the elastic vibration is not correct. Once again we find that the ether does not behave like matter which obeys the ordinary laws of mechanics, and every theory must take full account of these curious peculiarities which experiment reveals.

Another difference, likewise very important, between the luminous and the sonorous vibrations, which also points out how little a.n.a.logous can be the const.i.tutions of the media which transmit the vibrations, appears in the phenomena of dispersion. The speed of propagation, which, as we have seen when discussing the measurement of the velocity of sound, depends very little on the musical note, is not at all the same in the case of the various radiations which can be propagated in the same substance. The index of refraction varies with the duration of the period, or, if you will, with the length of wave _in vacuo_ which is proportioned to this duration, since _in vacuo_ the speed of propagation is entirely the same for all vibrations.

Cauchy was the first to propose a theory on which other attempts have been modelled; for example, the very interesting and simple one of Briot. This last-named supposed that the luminous vibration could not perceptibly drag with it the molecular material of the medium across which it is propagated, but that matter, nevertheless, reacts on the ether with an intensity proportional to the elongation, in such a manner as tends to bring it back to its position of equilibrium. With this simple hypothesis we can fairly well interpret the phenomena of the dispersion of light in the case of transparent substances; but far from well, as M. Carvallo has noted in some extremely careful experiments, the dispersion of the infra-red spectrum, and not at all the peculiarities presented by absorbent substances.

M. Boussinesq arrives at almost similar results, by attributing dispersion, on the other hand, to the partial dragging along of ponderable matter and to its action on the ether. By combining, in a measure, as was subsequently done by M. Boussinesq, the two hypotheses, formulas can be established far better in accord with all the known facts.

These facts are somewhat complex. It was at first thought that the index always varied in inverse ratio to the wave-length, but numerous substances have been discovered which present the phenomenon of abnormal dispersion--that is to say, substances in which certain radiations are propagated, on the contrary, the more quickly the shorter their period. This is the case with gases themselves, as demonstrated, for example, by a very elegant experiment of M.

Becquerel on the dispersion of the vapour of sodium. Moreover, it may happen that yet more complications may be met with, as no substance is transparent for the whole extent of the spectrum. In the case of certain radiations the speed of propagation becomes nil, and the index shows sometimes a maximum and sometimes a minimum. All those phenomena are in close relation with those of absorption.