Kitabı oku: «The Universe a Vast Electric Organism», sayfa 7
The great boast of the mathematicians is that Le Verrier calculated where Neptune was before it was discovered by Galle at Berlin, but the fact is he missed it eight astronomical units or over seven hundred millions of miles, and said Neptune was not the planet he was looking for.
These are two average tests of mathematical calculations, and they are on a par with the mis-calculations of how much the sun must burn up annually under the so-called laws of gravity to supply the necessary heat to the earth and planets.
Imagination—constructive ideality—is the highest gift of Deity to man, and the only faculty that can reason from the known to the unknown and comprehend the wonders and grandeur of the universe.
I am not a practical chemist seeking the mysteries of nature in the laboratory, nor a professional scientist exploring the fields of original research; but, like La Place, Comte, Herbert Spencer and others, I formulate my theories and scientific hypotheses from the latest and best established facts of science as I see it. Science is only unified or systematic knowledge. Every fact is a scientific fact, and every truth is a scientific truth whether it pertains to so-called science or to religion or philosophy. Nature has no subdivisions of science, religion or philosophy, nor astronomy, chemistry or geology; but all things are a unity, constituting one harmonious universe; and he who separates science from religion or either from philosophy goes contrary to nature and divides the universe into fractions. As I am not a member of any scientific or religious association, I have no prejudices to overcome and seek the truth only, without fear, favor or undue predilections. Old traditions, fossilized theories and antiquated authority have little weight in my mind by the side of recent facts. But I am not an iconoclast, for I am more anxious to build up than to tear down.
The professional scientists may deem such students of nature as myself who trespass upon their chosen domain as amateurs. If so, it is a proud distinction. Amateurs have accomplished nearly all the great things in the world's history. Cromwell was a farmer, Hastings and Clive were clerks, Bismarck twice failed in his examination to become a lawyer, Washington was a surveyor and Franklin a printer, Herschell was a musician, Faraday a bookbinder, Scott a lawyer's clerk, Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning machine, was a barber; Spinoza a glass-blower, Herbert Spencer an engineer, Edison a newsboy, and Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive, an ordinary workman; Lincoln was a railsplitter, Grant a tanner, Andrew Johnson a tailor, Andrew Jackson a saddler, Vanderbilt a ferryman, Rothschild a peddler, Krupp a blacksmith, Paul a tent-maker, and Christ a carpenter. The names of distinguished amateurs could be continued indefinitely, but space forbids.
As I have discussed this question elsewhere and touched on it in other chapters, extended discussion might cause repetition. Besides, this volume is not intended for detail or abtruse minutiæ, but for the statement of leading facts for the masses of intelligent people, who abhor technical terms and dry details. Many people find scientific books so dry and unpalatable, that, like the weary listener to the dry, dull sermon of the missionary, who said:
"If I were a cannibal from Timbuctoo,
I would eat that missionary and his hymnbook too."
Doubtless he thought the hymnbook would be excellent dessert after such a dry meal; and some readers of scientific works find most any kind of dessert refreshing after partaking of the mental pabulum of dry statistics and technical terms to be found in many scientific works.
Our American Indian is never dull or unpoetic in his conception of the Universe. He sees God in the lightning, hears Him in the thunder; and according to him the "Milky Way" is the "Path of souls" leading to the villages in the sun. Along this pathway travel the spirits of the dead, and the brighter stars are "the campfires for the solitary journey to the land of the hereafter."
The Japanese term the Milky Way "the silver river of heaven." And the ancient Greeks considered the blue dome of the sky a crystal globe where dwelt the Olympian gods.
No science should be dry, and above all astronomy should lift us to empyrean heights where we may tread among the stars.
CHAPTER VIII
RECENT ELECTRICAL DISCOVERIES AND APPLIANCES, WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, ETC
It is said facts are now being discovered and physical theories developed the ultimate result of which may be the explanation of the mysterious phenomena presented by the corona of the sun, the tails of comets, the aurora, terrestrial magnetism and its variations, nebulae and the zodiacal light. First, these facts are being established in connection with the pressure exerted by light which was pointed out by Maxwell and deduced by him from his electro-magnetic theory of light, which is, that when a pencil of light impinges perpendicularly on an opaque object, it produces a pressure on the surface of that object. This pressure is determined by the condition that if the object were set in motion with the velocity of light and the force against it kept up, the power to keep up the pressure would be equal to that carried by the ray of light.
Second, that particles smaller than atoms, called corpuscles or ions, are thrown off with high velocity from the intensely heated bodies. The sun, they claim, being such a body, it follows that such ions must be shot out from it. On this theory it is held that the explanation of a comet's tail is simple. The comet evaporates on the side next to the sun and, there being no pressure to hinder its expansion, it begins in flying off in all directions. It condenses into very minute particles which, by reason of the impulsion or pressure of the sun's rays, are thrown in the opposite direction from the sun.
My explanation has been, without all this detail, that it was the same law of electric repulsion which drove the comet off and prevented it falling into the sun, which also drove the comet's tail in an opposite direction from the sun.
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.
Long electric waves are radiated to greater distances than shorter ones, and much depends on the syntonic system, or tuning of the instrument, so as to communicate with any selected receiver to the exclusion of all others.
An electric generator supplies the source of electricity for operating an induction coil to transform the low pressure into an alternating current of high pressure. This charges the wire suspended from a mast and the wire leading to the earth to a sufficient potential to cause the opposite charges of electricity to rush together, thus forming a spark or disruptive discharge through a small air gap; as a result high potential currents surge to and fro through the wires hundreds of thousands of times per second.
These high potential currents radiate electric waves which are propagated as light waves and spread out in every direction. It is said the whole process of transmitting and receiving wireless messages is not unlike to the emission of light and its reception by the retina of the eye.
The reception of these waves is by means of a vertical wire similar to that used in transmitting, the difference being the wires at the terminals are connected with metal filings inclosed in a small glass tube called the coherer instead of the spark gap. The electric waves impinge on the elevated wire and are converted into electric oscillations, which act on the filings, and an auxiliary circuit registers the impulses on a ribbon of paper in readable Morse dots and dashes. The higher the vertical or mast wires and the greater the number of wires, the greater the wave length and the farther the distance transmitted.
Marconi in his first Atlantic tests employed kites and balloons to carry the vertical wire so that long electric waves could be obtained. Since then he has carried his wires on high masts, as at Poldhu, Glace Bay, and Wellfleet Station. The Marconi companies have equipped six stations in the United States, five in Hawaii, twenty in Great Britain, one in Belgium and one in France. There are eighteen ocean steamers, thirty-two British-men-of-war and several Italian and American warships which have Marconi installations. Marconi says: "There are thirty-five land stations, twenty-one liners and eighty-five warships equipped with Marconi apparatus. Land stations cost $1,000, and ship equipment, $700. Trans-Atlantic stations cost $100,000 each."
Wireless telegraphy is the most recent miracle of electricity, and shows it to be the cosmic energy of the universe. Science stumbled upon it. And in the same way, Sir Wm. Crookes, in a recent interview, says: "Science may some day stumble upon the soul. Men of science believe more than they can express, spiritually as well as physically." He will not prophesy, but said with ominous import: "If you had come to me a hundred years ago do you think I should have dreamed of foretelling the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it. I use it every day, but I don't understand it. Think of that little, stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating not only sounds, but words, and with the most delicate and illusive inflections of tone which separate one human voice from another."
Mr. Peter Cooper Hewitt, says the Electrical Review, has invented a new apparatus which it is said will make a revolution in the method of sending wireless telegraph messages. The device consists of a glass globe about ten inches in diameter, having two tubes containing mercury sealed in the bottom of the vessel.
This apparatus acts, as a powerful and effective interrupter and takes the place of the spark gap now used in discharging the condensers for setting up electrical waves. It enables powerful, rapid and continuous oscillations to be set up in the antenna, or sending mast, used in transmitting wireless messages, and not only enables messages to be sent over very great distances with ease, but permits secrecy to be maintained, which heretofore has been impossible.
The operation of this device depends upon two new phenomena in physics which Mr. Hewitt has discovered in the course of his researches. The first is the resistance of the mercury in the apparatus to a passage of current until a high potential has been applied; the second is the disappearance of this resistance after this high voltage has been reached.
The effect of these two phenomena is to permit a condenser to be charged to a high potential and then, by the disappearance of the resistance of the interrupter, to discharge it very rapidly. The result of this action is to set up violent and rapid current impulses in the circuit containing the condenser, and thence in the sending wire. The current impulse, being very powerful, will enable messages to be sent to great distances, and as the number of oscillations per second can be controlled, this permits of selective signaling. The number of impulses can be made very high—above a million a second. The device is inexpensive and durable. It is considered a great contribution to wireless telegraphy and establishes it on a commercial basis, and selective signaling is solved and trans-Atlantic transmission will be easy.
Radium is a rare metal recently discovered, having remarkable qualities and very difficult to obtain. It is a constituent of pitchblende, which is found in many places, but only in a small way. So far all that has been procured has come from a mine in Cornwall. A ton of pitchblende carries about 15½ grains of radium and it is very difficult to extract. A grain is estimated to be worth $200,000 and a kilogram is worth about $2,000,000. There is only about one pound of radium in the world. It is estimated to be worth $1,000,000.
Radium was discovered by M. and Mme. Curie, in France, after they had familiarized themselves with the remarkable properties of uranium and polonium. Radium has many curious and inexplicable qualities. It continually emits heat and light without combustion, without chemical changes of any kind, and without any change in its bulk, appearance or molecular structure, which remains identical after many months.
It is so powerful in the energy it constantly hurls forth as to entail many dangers in handling it. Sir Wm. Crookes says in describing it: "Probably if half a kilogram were in a bottle on that table it would kill us all. It would most certainly destroy our sight and burn our skins to such an extent we could not survive. The smallest bit placed on one's arm would produce a blister it would take months to heal." It also emits electrons with a velocity so great that Prof. Crookes estimates "one gram is enough to lift the whole of the British navy to the top of Ben Nevis, and I am not quite certain that we could not throw in the French fleet as well."
It has such surprising properties that Lord Kelvin was moved to say of it that, "it threatens to overthrow the correlation of forces," which is the rock-ribbed, foundation postulate of science. It seems already to have unsettled the accepted theory of light, and after the experiments of the Russian scientists who are now investigating it, Profs. Mendelief, Yigooff and Borgruan, the result may give us new scientific theories and a new nomenclature.
Radium tends to confirm my electric theory of creation, it also seems to aid the Thomson corpuscles hypothesis, and will open the way to new and important discoveries.
My opinion from very brief thought on the subject is that radium is in its nature a form of electric energy solidified, and may be a bundle of Thomson corpuscles or electrons combined and solidified by some process not yet understood. It is in the nature of an electric dynamo, and draws its constant supply of electricity from the air. It is plain that it is an electric substance and manifestation, for, as Prof. Crookes says, "it emits electrons with a velocity so great one gram would lift the British navy to the top of a mountain, and he is even willing to throw in the French fleet." If he were not a great scientist, I should say he was exaggerating like an amateur. Radium is at present a great scientific puzzle. It seems to destroy the present theory of light and the conservation of energy and the so-called attraction of gravitation by reason of its marvelous energy and wonderful qualities.
But I stand with the scientists on the doctrine of the conservation of energy and the correlation of forces, and do not believe radium seriously threatens it, though Lord Kelvin had much reason to say so; and it is a puzzle yet unsolved as to how it maintains its energy without diminution of its force and bulk. I see but one explanation, and that is, that it renews itself constantly by drawing electric energy from the air, as a battery or dynamo draws it, and thus retains its marvelous power unimpaired.
I hold that energy, like matter, is a substance and can neither be created nor destroyed. It is impossible to create a molecule out of nothing or to reduce a single particle of energy to nothing. Energy, like matter, can be changed from one form to another or from one place to another, but all matter is one matter in its elemental form, and all energy is from one original energy, which I hold to be electricity. All matter is the aggregate manifestations of the invisible atom, and all energy is the varied manifestations of the one ultimate and only force in nature—electricity.
The transformation of energy, such as falling water, expanding steam, heat, light, vital force, and so-called gravitation, are all from the same electric elemental force, and this energy is without increase or decrease and is known as the conservation of energy. The definition given of electricity by Atkins in his work on electricity, which says, "it is a molecular mode of motion," is an absurdity, for motion is an effect produced by a cause, and all motion is caused by electric energy. And the mode of motion is simply the manner in which the law of electro-magnetism operates. Thus there may be an electric law yet undiscovered by which a substance like radium may draw electric energy from the air and keep its force and bulk unimpaired for many months, or perpetually.
But radium raises many other questions affecting the nature of light and heat, such as how such great heat and light can be condensed into so small a compass and evolved with such wonderful power.
Prospecting for valuable metals by electricity has been recently introduced in Wales with remarkable success. In the Cwnystwyth mines in Cornwall new and valuable deposits of ore and blende were located. These mines have been worked for over fifteen hundred years, and much of this time the search for additional lodes has been going on; yet this electrical device accomplished in a few hours what fifteen centuries of search failed to discover.
By the electric method of prospecting a current of high potential—30,000 volts or more—is employed to energize a piece of ground supposed to contain mineral. The current is taken from the terminals of the generating coil to metal rods or electrodes which are pushed an inch or two into the earth. From these distributers the lines of force spread out in both vertical and horizontal planes and may be made to extend over an area of several miles.
Their presence is detected by means of a delicate telephonic receiver connected with a second pair of metallic rods, which are stuck into the earth in any desired position. When the receiver is silent or gives only faint sounds, it indicates that the lines of force are deflected from their normal course. This reveals the presence of metallic masses in the earth, and, by moving the electrodes about, the position and area of an ore deposit may be determined with considerable accuracy. In new and unknown ground the operator would place his distributing electrodes about 200 yards apart, and remove his receiving instrument to a distance of half a mile or more. If his general knowledge of geological formation led him to believe that the metallic veins, if there were any, would run generally north and south, he would place his electrodes east and west, and if he found the electrical distribution normal he might conclude that the ground contained no mineral.
This remarkable electrical system for detecting the mineral deposits beneath the surface of the earth will doubtless be tested and perfected until man will be able without digging into the earth to ascertain the mineral deposits at any point beneath its surface. It may not always determine if they may be profitably worked, but in many mining regions it will be a blessing, and save much unprofitable work and sad disappointment.
Electrically heated cooking and laundry apparatus is now used in Germany and other countries. And there are farms on large German estates which are run by electricity. The Guednau farm in Eastern Prussia consists of 450 acres, and its dairy handles one thousand gallons of milk daily. It is lighted by electricity, has an electrical churn and feed-cutting machine, water-pumping apparatus, incandescent lamps, threshing and grist mills, saw mill, automatic plough and electrical agricultural machines, all run by charged batteries and a fifty-horse power stationery engine moving two dynamos. Thus farming is made attractive and free from drudgery, and is run like a machine by the electric current. Electricity is used not only to run some farms, but also to hasten and increase the growth of farm products by running wires a few inches beneath the surface to energize the soil.
The Commercial Cable Company announce that their ocean cable connections will be complete with Manila, in the Philippines, by the 4th of July of this year, 1903, and that on that day they will telegraph around the world in forty seconds. What a miracle of wonders! Fifty years ago the speediest communication from point to point was by swift horsemen making fifty miles a day. Now the round earth's antipodes is only forty seconds apart by reason of electric appliances.
So wonderful has been the growth of electrical appliances and utilities that Prof. H. B. Shaw, of the Missouri University, in a recent lecture, said: "In twenty years the electric light industry has developed from nothing to the manufacture of over 100,000 incandescent lamps per day. Ninety-five per cent. of the street railways in this country are electrically operated. Yet this industry was cradled in Kansas City, Mo., only about twenty years ago."
This was when I first had my attention drawn to electricity, for I saw the building of that line on East Fifth street, in that city. That and the lighting of the gas by an electric flash from a human body caused me to investigate electric phenomena and formulate the electric theory of creation.
Prof. Shaw said: "The latest development in long distance power is in California, where ten thousand horse power is transmitted two hundred miles from where it is generated with a loss of only ten per cent. of power in the line. Ten thousand horse power is sufficient to raise a million tons two inches per minute."
What a miracle that such power can pass along a wire no larger than a child's finger, and exert such force two hundred miles from where it is generated! Nothing but the invisible creative cosmic force of the universe could accomplish such a seeming miracle.
But some scientists are so irrational as to say this force is merely the pressure, twist or whirl of the ether, when it is plain that if the ether were as rigid as steel it could not exert such force and power. And as to it being a derivative force derived from the coal, wood or sun, it is plain it is the same force and the original, ultimate, creating evolving and only force in the physical universe.
There has been much labor and money expended in endeavoring to perfect a balloon or airship, which would be safe and could be directed through the air at will in any course desired. Electricity has been used as the steering power and aluminum, because of its light weight, for the frame-work. The French especially have given great attention to what they call the dirigible balloon, but no great amount of success has been achieved and, in my opinion, never will.
In the very nature of things, no safe airship can ever be built. It was not intended that man should travel or carry burdens through the upper regions of the air. First, because the law of the earth's electric attraction forbids it. Second, because the sudden and powerful wind and electric currents that pervade the upper regions of the atmosphere are sure to bring ruin and death, sooner or later, and no human power can prevent it.
The balloon or airship is only a dangerous toy which can be useful perhaps in times of war to spy out the enemy, but utterly useless otherwise, and which means death in a very short time to all who risk their lives in its treacherous power.
There have been two recent and striking examples of this in the case of the two distinguished experts in Paris who thought they had built airships that could overcome the powers of nature, and while proudly exhibiting them to their family and friends were hurled to a sudden and fearful death.
The many deaths and narrow escapes from these useless and dangerous toys make it almost certain that no sane man would risk his life in one of them, though there were a thousand at his command free of expense.
Of all the useless follies on which inventive genius and money have been expended, the airship is the worst, because if millions of the most perfect ones the imagination of man can conceive were built and offered free, no prudent man would risk his life or his goods in their treacherous care. The powers of nature, and what the ancients called the demons of the air, forbid that the airship should ever be anything more than a dangerous toy for reckless persons, who wish to jeopardize their lives.
Great efforts have been made, much money expended and many lives lost in futile attempts to find the North Pole, which when discovered may appear like any other ice field, mountain glacier, or snowdrift of the Arctic Circle. But the thirst for knowledge and the love of adventure and exploration where no financial reward can be expected is creditable to humanity, and shows that the love of knowledge is sometimes above that of sordid gain. The struggle for two centuries has been to reach the North Pole, and it has been approached as near as 700 miles; but recent reports indicate that conditions are more favorable for reaching the South Pole; and a French expedition outfitted this year for the North Pole have changed their destination to the South Pole. One or both poles are likely to be discovered in a few years.
