The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 67

Such is the hypothesis of Lorentz, which reduces to Franklin's hypothesis for slight velocities; it will therefore explain, for these small velocities, Newton's law. Moreover, as gravitation goes back to forces of electrodynamic origin, the general theory of Lorentz will apply, and consequently the principle of relativity will not be violated.

We see that Newton's law is no longer applicable to great velocities and that it must be modified, for bodies in motion, precisely in the same way as the laws of electrostatics for electricity in motion.

We know that electromagnetic perturbations spread with the velocity of light. We may therefore be tempted to reject the preceding theory upon remembering that gravitation spreads, according to the calculations of Laplace, at least ten million times more quickly than light, and that consequently it can not be of electromagnetic origin. The result of Laplace is well known, but one is generally ignorant of its signification. Laplace supposed that, if the propagation of gravitation is not instantaneous, its velocity of spread combines with that of the body attracted, as happens for light in the phenomenon of astronomic aberration, so that the effective force is not directed along the straight joining the two bodies, but makes with this straight a small angle. This is a very special hypothesis, not well justified, and, in any case, entirely different from that of Lorentz. Laplace's result proves nothing against the theory of Lorentz.

II

_Comparison with Astronomic Observations_

Can the preceding theories be reconciled with astronomic observations?

First of all, if we adopt them, the energy of the planetary motions will be constantly dissipated by the effect of the _wave of acceleration_.

From this would result that the mean motions of the stars would constantly accelerate, as if these stars were moving in a resistant medium. But this effect is exceedingly slight, far too much so to be discerned by the most precise observations. The acceleration of the heavenly bodies is relatively slight, so that the effects of the wave of acceleration are negligible and the motion may be regarded as _quasi stationary_. It is true that the effects of the wave of acceleration constantly acc.u.mulate, but this acc.u.mulation itself is so slow that thousands of years of observation would be necessary for it to become sensible. Let us therefore make the calculation considering the motion as quasi-stationary, and that under the three following hypotheses:

A. Admit the hypothesis of Abraham (electrons indeformable) and retain Newton's law in its usual form;

B. Admit the hypothesis of Lorentz about the deformation of electrons and retain the usual Newton's law;

C. Admit the hypothesis of Lorentz about electrons and modify Newton's law as we have done in the preceding paragraph, so as to render it compatible with the principle of relativity.

It is in the motion of Mercury that the effect will be most sensible, since this planet has the greatest velocity. Tisserand formerly made an a.n.a.logous calculation, admitting Weber's law; I recall that Weber had sought to explain at the same time the electrostatic and electrodynamic phenomena in supposing that electrons (whose name was not yet invented) exercise, one upon another, attractions and repulsions directed along the straight joining them, and depending not only upon their distances, but upon the first and second derivatives of these distances, consequently upon their velocities and their accelerations. This law of Weber, different enough from those which to-day tend to prevail, none the less presents a certain a.n.a.logy with them.

Tisserand found that, if the Newtonian attraction conformed to Weber's law there resulted, for Mercury's perihelion, secular variation of 14", _of the same sense as that which has been observed and could not be explained_, but smaller, since this is 38".

Let us recur to the hypotheses A, B and C, and study first the motion of a planet attracted by a fixed center. The hypotheses B and C are no longer distinguished, since, if the attracting point is fixed, the field it produces is a purely electrostatic field, where the attraction varies inversely as the square of the distance, in conformity with Coulomb's electrostatic law, identical with that of Newton.

The vis viva equation holds good, taking for vis viva the new definition; in the same way, the equation of areas is replaced by another equivalent to it; the moment of the quant.i.ty of motion is a constant, but the quant.i.ty of motion must be defined as in the new dynamics.

The only sensible effect will be a secular motion of the perihelion.

With the theory of Lorentz, we shall find, for this motion, half of what Weber's law would give; with the theory of Abraham, two fifths.

If now we suppose two moving bodies gravitating around their common center of gravity, the effects are very little different, though the calculations may be a little more complicated. The motion of Mercury's perihelion would therefore be 7" in the theory of Lorentz and 5".6 in that of Abraham.

The effect moreover is proportional to (_n_^{3})(_a_^{2}), where _n_ is the star's mean motion and a the radius of its...o...b..t. For the planets, in virtue of Kepler's law, the effect varies then inversely as sqrt(_a_^{5}); it is therefore insensible, save for Mercury.

It is likewise insensible for the moon though _n_ is great, because _a_ is extremely small; in sum, it is five times less for Venus, and six hundred times less for the moon than for Mercury. We may add that as to Venus and the earth, the motion of the perihelion (for the same angular velocity of this motion) would be much more difficult to discern by astronomic observations, because the excentricity of their orbits is much less than for Mercury.

To sum up, _the only sensible effect upon astronomic observations would be a motion of Mercury's perihelion, in the same sense as that which has been observed without being explained, but notably slighter_.

That can not be regarded as an argument in favor of the new dynamics, since it will always be necessary to seek another explanation for the greater part of Mercury's anomaly; but still less can it be regarded as an argument against it.

III

_The Theory of Lesage_

It is interesting to compare these considerations with a theory long since proposed to explain universal gravitation.

Suppose that, in the interplanetary s.p.a.ces, circulate in every direction, with high velocities, very tenuous corpuscles. A body isolated in s.p.a.ce will not be affected, apparently, by the impacts of these corpuscles, since these impacts are equally distributed in all directions. But if two bodies _A_ and _B_ are present, the body _B_ will play the role of screen and will intercept part of the corpuscles which, without it, would have struck _A_. Then, the impacts received by _A_ in the direction opposite that from _B_ will no longer have a counterpart, or will now be only partially compensated, and this will push _A_ toward _B_.

Such is the theory of Lesage; and we shall discuss it, taking first the view-point of ordinary mechanics.

First, how should the impacts postulated by this theory take place; is it according to the laws of perfectly elastic bodies, or according to those of bodies devoid of elasticity, or according to an intermediate law? The corpuscles of Lesage can not act as perfectly elastic bodies; otherwise the effect would be null, since the corpuscles intercepted by the body _B_ would be replaced by others which would have rebounded from _B_, and calculation proves that the compensation would be perfect. It is necessary then that the impact make the corpuscles lose energy, and this energy should appear under the form of heat. But how much heat would thus be produced? Note that attraction pa.s.ses through bodies; it is necessary therefore to represent to ourselves the earth, for example, not as a solid screen, but as formed of a very great number of very small spherical molecules, which play individually the role of little screens, but between which the corpuscles of Lesage may freely circulate. So, not only the earth is not a solid screen, but it is not even a cullender, since the voids occupy much more s.p.a.ce than the plenums. To realize this, recall that Laplace has demonstrated that attraction, in traversing the earth, is weakened at most by one ten-millionth part, and his proof is perfectly satisfactory: in fact, if attraction were absorbed by the body it traverses, it would no longer be proportional to the ma.s.ses; it would be _relatively_ weaker for great bodies than for small, since it would have a greater thickness to traverse. The attraction of the sun for the earth would therefore be _relatively_ weaker than that of the sun for the moon, and thence would result, in the motion of the moon, a very sensible inequality. We should therefore conclude, if we adopt the theory of Lesage, that the total surface of the spherical molecules which compose the earth is at most the ten-millionth part of the total surface of the earth.

Darwin has proved that the theory of Lesage only leads exactly to Newton's law when we postulate particles entirely devoid of elasticity.

The attraction exerted by the earth on a ma.s.s 1 at a distance 1 will then be proportional, at the same time, to the total surface _S_ of the spherical molecules composing it, to the velocity _v_ of the corpuscles, to the square root of the density [rho] of the medium formed by the corpuscles. The heat produced will be proportional to _S_, to the density [rho], and to the cube of the velocity _v_.

But it is necessary to take account of the resistance experienced by a body moving in such a medium; it can not move, in fact, without going against certain impacts, in fleeing, on the contrary, before those coming in the opposite direction, so that the compensation realized in the state of rest can no longer subsist. The calculated resistance is proportional to _S_, to [rho] and to _v_; now, we know that the heavenly bodies move as if they experienced no resistance, and the precision of observations permits us to fix a limit to the resistance of the medium.

This resistance varying as _S_[rho]_v_, while the attraction varies as _S_{sqrt([rho]_v_)}, we see that the ratio of the resistance to the square of the attraction is inversely as the product _Sv_.

We have therefore a lower limit of the product _Sv_. We have already an upper limit of _S_ (by the absorption of attraction by the body it traverses); we have therefore a lower limit of the velocity _v_, which must be at least 2410^{17} times that of light.

From this we are able to deduce [rho] and the quant.i.ty of heat produced; this quant.i.ty would suffice to raise the temperature 10^{26} degrees a second; the earth would receive in a given time 10^{20} times more heat than the sun emits in the same time; I am not speaking of the heat the sun sends to the earth, but of that it radiates in all directions.

It is evident the earth could not long stand such a regime.

We should not be led to results less fantastic if, contrary to Darwin's views, we endowed the corpuscles of Lesage with an elasticity imperfect without being null. In truth, the vis viva of these corpuscles would not be entirely converted into heat, but the attraction produced would likewise be less, so that it would be only the part of this vis viva converted into heat, which would contribute to produce the attraction and that would come to the same thing; a judicious employment of the theorem of the viriel would enable us to account for this.

The theory of Lesage may be transformed; suppress the corpuscles and imagine the ether overrun in all senses by luminous waves coming from all points of s.p.a.ce. When a material object receives a luminous wave, this wave exercises upon it a mechanical action due to the Maxwell-Bartholi pressure, just as if it had received the impact of a material projectile. The waves in question could therefore play the role of the corpuscles of Lesage. This is what is supposed, for example, by M. Tommasina.

The difficulties are not removed for all that; the velocity of propagation can be only that of light, and we are thus led, for the resistance of the medium, to an inadmissible figure. Besides, if the light is all reflected, the effect is null, just as in the hypothesis of the perfectly elastic corpuscles.

That there should be attraction, it is necessary that the light be partially absorbed; but then there is production of heat. The calculations do not differ essentially from those made in the ordinary theory of Lesage, and the result retains the same fantastic character.

On the other hand, attraction is not absorbed by the body it traverses, or hardly at all; it is not so with the light we know. Light which would produce the Newtonian attraction would have to be considerably different from ordinary light and be, for example, of very short wave length. This does not count that, if our eyes were sensible of this light, the whole heavens should appear to us much more brilliant than the sun, so that the sun would seem to us to stand out in black, otherwise the sun would repel us instead of attracting us. For all these reasons, light which would permit of the explanation of attraction would be much more like Rontgen rays than like ordinary light.

And besides, the X-rays would not suffice; however penetrating they may seem to us, they could not pa.s.s through the whole earth; it would be necessary therefore to imagine X'-rays much more penetrating than the ordinary X-rays. Moreover a part of the energy of these X'-rays would have to be destroyed, otherwise there would be no attraction. If you do not wish it transformed into heat, which would lead to an enormous heat production, you must suppose it radiated in every direction under the form of secondary rays, which might be called X" and which would have to be much more penetrating still than the X'-rays, otherwise they would in their turn derange the phenomena of attraction.

Such are the complicated hypotheses to which we are led when we try to give life to the theory of Lesage.

But all we have said presupposes the ordinary laws of mechanics.

Will things go better if we admit the new dynamics? And first, can we conserve the principles of relativity? Let us give at first to the theory of Lesage its primitive form, and suppose s.p.a.ce ploughed by material corpuscles; if these corpuscles were perfectly elastic, the laws of their impact would conform to this principle of relativity, but we know that then their effect would be null. We must therefore suppose these corpuscles are not elastic, and then it is difficult to imagine a law of impact compatible with the principle of relativity. Besides, we should still find a production of considerable heat, and yet a very sensible resistance of the medium.

If we suppress these corpuscles and revert to the hypothesis of the Maxwell-Bartholi pressure, the difficulties will not be less. This is what Lorentz himself has attempted in his Memoir to the Amsterdam Academy of Sciences of April 25, 1900.

Consider a system of electrons immersed in an ether permeated in every sense by luminous waves; one of these electrons, struck by one of these waves, begins to vibrate; its vibration will be synchronous with that of light; but it may have a difference of phase, if the electron absorbs a part of the incident energy. In fact, if it absorbs energy, this is because the vibration of the ether _impels_ the electron; the electron must therefore be slower than the ether. An electron in motion is a.n.a.logous to a convection current; therefore every magnetic field, in particular that due to the luminous perturbation itself, must exert a mechanical action upon this electron. This action is very slight; moreover, it changes sign in the current of the period; nevertheless, the mean action is not null if there is a difference of phase between the vibrations of the electron and those of the ether. The mean action is proportional to this difference, consequently to the energy absorbed by the electron. I can not here enter into the detail of the calculations; suffice it to say only that the final result is an attraction of any two electrons, varying inversely as the square of the distance and proportional to the energy absorbed by the two electrons.

Therefore there can not be attraction without absorption of light and, consequently, without production of heat, and this it is which determined Lorentz to abandon this theory, which, at bottom, does not differ from that of Lesage-Maxwell-Bartholi. He would have been much more dismayed still if he had pushed the calculation to the end. He would have found that the temperature of the earth would have to increase 10^{12} degrees a second.

IV

_Conclusions_

I have striven to give in few words an idea as complete as possible of these new doctrines; I have sought to explain how they took birth; otherwise the reader would have had ground to be frightened by their boldness. The new theories are not yet demonstrated; far from it; only they rest upon an aggregate of probabilities sufficiently weighty for us not to have the right to treat them with disregard.