The Ether of Space Part 2

Nothing is more certain than that. No physicist disputes it. Newton himself, who is commonly and truly a.s.serted to have promulgated a rival theory, felt the necessity of an etherial medium, and knew that light consisted essentially of waves.

_Sight._

A small digression here, to avoid any possible confusion due to the fact that I have purposely a.s.sociated together temperature nerves and sight nerves. They are admittedly not the same, but they are alike in this, that they both afford evidence of radiation; and, were we blind, we might still know a good deal about the sun, and if our temperature nerves were immensely increased in delicacy (not all over, for that would be merely painful, but in some protected region), we might even learn about the moon, planets, and stars. In fact, an eye, consisting of a pupil (preferably a lens) and a sunken cavity lined with a surface sensitive to heat, could readily be imagined, and might be somewhat singularly effective. It would be more than a light recorder, it could detect all the etherial quiverings caused by surrounding objects, and hence would see perfectly well in what we call "the dark." But it would probably see far too much for convenience, since it would necessarily be affected by every kind of radiation in simple proportion to its energy; unless, indeed, it were provided with a supply of screens with suitably selected absorbing powers. But whatever might be the advantage or disadvantage of such a sense-organ, we as yet do not possess one. Our eye does not act by detecting heat; in other words, it is not affected by the whole range of etherial quiverings, but only by a very minute and apparently insignificant portion. It wholly ignores the ether waves whose frequency is comparable with that of sound; and, for thirty or forty octaves above this, nothing about us responds; but high up, in a range of vibration of the inconceivably high pitch of four to seven hundred million million per second--a range which extremely few accessible bodies are able to emit, and which it requires some knowledge and skill artificially to produce--to those waves the eye is acutely, surpa.s.singly, and most intelligently sensitive.

This little fragment of total radiation is in itself trivial and negligible. Were it not for men, and glow-worms, and a few other forms of life, hardly any of it would ever occur, on such a moderate-sized lump of matter as the earth. Except for an occasional volcano, or a flash of lightning, only gigantic bodies like the sun and stars have energy enough to produce these higher flute-like notes; and they do it by sheer main force and violence--the violence of their gravitative energy--producing not only these, but every other kind of radiation also. Glow-worms, so far as I know, alone have learnt the secret of emitting the physiologically useful waves, and none others.

_Why_ these waves are physiologically useful--why they are what is called "light," while other kinds of radiation are "dark," is a question to be asked, but, at present, only tentatively answered. The answer must ultimately be given by the Physiologist; for the distinction between light and non-light can only be stated in terms of the eye, and its peculiar specialised sensitiveness; but a hint may be given him by the Physicist. The etherial waves which affect the eye and the photographic plate are of a size not wholly incomparable with that of the atoms of matter. When a physical phenomenon is concerned with the ultimate atoms of matter, it is often relegated at present to the field of knowledge summarised under the head of Chemistry. Sight is probably a chemical sense. The retina may contain complex aggregations of atoms, shaken asunder by the incident light vibrations, and rapidly built up again by the living tissues in which they live; the nerve-endings meanwhile appreciating them in their temporarily dissociated condition. A vague speculation! Not to be further countenanced except as a working hypothesis leading to examination of fact; but, nevertheless, the direction in which the thoughts of some physicists are tending--a direction towards which many recently discovered experimental facts point.[2]

_Gravitation and Cohesion._

It would take too long to do more than suggest some other functions for which a continuous medium of communication is necessary. We shall argue in Chapter VIII that technical action at a distance is impossible. A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles,--that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across s.p.a.ce. Radiation is not the only thing the earth feels from the sun; there is in addition its gigantic gravitative pull, _a force or tension more than what a million million steel rods_, _each seventeen feet in diameter_, _could stand_ (_see_ Chap. IX). What mechanism transmits this gigantic force? Again, take a steel bar itself: when violently stretched, with how great tenacity its parts cling together! Yet its particles are not in absolute contact, they are only virtually attached to each other by means of the universal connecting medium--the ether,--a medium that must be competent to transmit the greatest stresses which our knowledge of gravitation and of cohesion shows us to exist.

_Electricity and Magnetism._

Hitherto I have mainly confined myself to the perception of the ether by our ancient sense of radiation, whereby we detect its subtle and delicate quiverings. But we are growing a new sense; not perhaps an actual sense-organ, though not so very unlike a new sense-organ, though the portions of matter which go to make the organ are not a.s.sociated with our bodies by the usual links of pain and disease; they are more a.n.a.logous to artificial teeth or mechanical limbs, and can be bought at an instrument-maker's.

Electroscopes, galvanometers, telephones--delicate instruments these; not yet eclipsing our sense-organs of flesh, but in a few cases coming within measurable distance of their surprising sensitiveness. And with these what do we do? Can we smell the ether, or touch it, or what is the closest a.n.a.logy? Perhaps there is no useful a.n.a.logy; but nevertheless we deal with it, and that closely. Not yet do we fully realise what we are doing. Not yet have we any dynamical theory of electric currents, of static charges, and of magnetism. Not yet, indeed, have we any dynamical theory of light. In fact, the ether has not yet been brought under the domain of simple mechanics--it has not yet been reduced to motion and force: and that probably because the _force_ aspect of it has been so singularly elusive that it is a question whether we ought to think of it as material at all. No, it is apart from mechanics at present. Conceivably it may remain apart; and our first additional category, wherewith the foundations of physics must some day be enlarged, may turn out to be an etherial one. And some such inclusion may have to be made before we can attempt to annex vital or mental processes. Perhaps they will all come in together.

Howsoever these things be, this is the kind of meaning lurking in the phrase that we do not yet know what electricity or what the ether is.

We have as yet no dynamical explanation of either of them; but the past century has taught us what seems to their student an overwhelming quant.i.ty of facts about them. And when the present century, or the century after, lets us deeper into their secrets, and into the secrets of some other phenomena now in course of being rationally investigated, I feel as if it would be no merely material prospect that will be opening on our view, but some glimpse into a region of the universe which Science has never entered yet, but which has been sought from far, and perhaps blindly apprehended, by painter and poet, by philosopher and saint.

_Note on the Spelling of Ethereal._

The usual word "ethereal" suggests something unsubstantial, and is so used in poetry; but for the prosaic treatment of Physics it is unsuitable, and etheric has occasionally been used instead. No just derivation can be given for such an adjective, however; and I have been accustomed simply to spell etherial with an _i_ when no poetic meaning was intended. This alternative spelling is not incorrect; but Milton uses the variant "ethereous," in a sense suggestive of something strong and substantial (_Par. Lost_, vi, 473). Either word, therefore, can be employed to replace "ethereal" in physics: and in succeeding chapters one or other of these is for the most part employed.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cf. sections 157A, 143, 187, and chap. xvi., of my _Modern Views of Electricity_.

CHAPTER III

INFLUENCE OF MOTION ON VARIOUS PHENOMENA

Notwithstanding its genuine physical nature and properties, the ether is singularly intangible and inaccessible to our senses, and accordingly is a subject on which it is extremely difficult to try experiments. Many have been the attempts to detect some phenomena depending on its motion relative to the earth. The earth is travelling round the sun at the rate of 19 miles a second, and although this is slow compared with light--being in fact just about 1/10,000th of the speed of light,--yet it would seem feasible to observe some modification of optical phenomena due to this motion through the ether.

And one such phenomenon is indeed known, namely, the stellar aberration discovered by Bradley in 1729. The position of objects not on the earth, and not connected with the solar system, is apparently altered by an amount comparable to one part in ten thousand, by the earth's motion; that is to say, the apparent place of a star is shifted from its true place by an angle 1/10,000th of a "radian,"[3]

or about 20 seconds of arc.

This is called Astronomical Aberration, and is extremely well known.

But a number of other problems open out in connexion with it, and on these it is desirable to enter into detail. For if the ether is stationary while the earth is flying through it--at a speed vastly faster than any cannon ball, as much faster than a cannon ball as an express train is faster than a saunter on foot--it is for all practical purposes the same as if the earth were stationary and the ether streaming past it with this immense velocity, in the opposite direction. And some consequence of such a drift might at first sight certainly be expected. It might, for instance, seem doubtful whether terrestrial surveying operations can be conducted, with the extreme accuracy expected of them, without some allowance for the violent rush of the light-conveying medium past and through the theodolite of the observer.

Let us therefore consider the whole subject further.

ABERRATION.

Everybody knows that to shoot a bird on the wing you must aim in front of it. Every one will readily admit that to hit a squatting rabbit from a moving train you must aim behind it.

These are examples of what may be called "aberration" from the sender's point of view, from the point of view of the source. And the aberration, or needful divergence between the point aimed at and the thing hit has opposite sign in the two cases--the case when receiver is moving, and the case when source is moving. Hence, if both be moving, it is possible for the two aberrations to neutralise each other. So to hit a rabbit running alongside the train you must aim straight at it.

If there were no air that is all simple enough. But every rifleman knows to his cost that though he fixes both himself and his target tightly to the ground, so as to destroy all aberration proper, yet a current of air is very competent to introduce a kind of spurious aberration of its own, which may be called windage; and that he must not aim at the target if he wants to hit it, but must aim a little in the eye of the wind.

So much from the shooter's point of view. Now attend to the point of view of the target.

Consider it made of soft enough material to be completely penetrated by the bullet, leaving a longish hole wherever struck. A person behind the target, whom we may call a marker, by applying his eye to the hole immediately after the hit, may be able to look through it at the shooter, and thereby to spot the successful man. I know that this is not precisely the function of an ordinary marker, but it is more complete than his ordinary function. All he does usually is to signal an impersonal hit; some one else has to record the ident.i.ty of the shooter. I am rather a.s.suming a volley of shots, and that the marker has to allocate the hits to their respective sources by means of the holes made in the target.

Well, will he do it correctly? a.s.suming, of course, that he can do so if everything is stationary, and ignoring all curvature of path, whether vertical or horizontal curvature. If you think it over you will perceive that a wind will not prevent his doing it correctly; the line of hole will point to the shooter along the path of his bullet, though it will not point along his line of aim. Also, if the shots are fired from a moving ship, the line of hole in a stationary target will point to the position the gun occupied at the instant the shot was fired, though it may have moved since then. In neither of these cases (moving medium and moving source) will there be any error.

But if the _target_ is in motion, on an armoured train for instance, then the marker will be at fault. The hole will not point to the man who fired the shot, but to an individual ahead of him. _The source will appear to be displaced in the direction of the observer's motion._ This is common aberration. It is the simplest thing in the world. The easiest ill.u.s.tration of it is that when you run through a vertical shower, you tilt your umbrella forward; or, if you have not got one, the drops. .h.i.t you in the face; more accurately, your face as you run forward hits the drops. So the shower appears to come from a cloud ahead of you, instead of from one overhead.

We have thus three motions to consider, that of the source, of the receiver, and of the medium; and, of these, only motion of receiver is able to cause an aberrational error in fixing the position of the source.

So far we have attended to the case of projectiles, with the object of leading up to light. But light does not consist of projectiles, it consists of waves; and with waves matters are a little different.

Waves crawl through a medium at their own definite pace; they cannot be _flung_ forwards or sideways by a moving source; they do not move by reason of an initial momentum which they are gradually expending, as shots do; their motion is more a.n.a.logous to that of a bird or other self-propelling animal, than it is to that of a shot. The motion of a wave in a moving medium may be likened to that of a rowing-boat on a river. It crawls forward with the water, and it drifts with the water; its resultant motion is compounded of the two, but it has nothing to do with the motion of its source. A shot from a pa.s.sing steamer retains the motion of the steamer as well as that given it by the powder. It is projected therefore in a slant direction. But a boat lowered from the side of a pa.s.sing steamer, and rowing off, retains none of the motion of its source; it is not projected, it is self-propelled. That is like the case of a wave.

The diagram ill.u.s.trates the difference. Fig. 1 shows a moving cannon or machine-gun, moving with the arrow, and firing a succession of shots which share the motion of the cannon as well as their own, and so travel slant. The shot fired from position 1 has reached A, that fired from position 2 has reached B, and that fired from position 3 has reached C, by the time the fourth shot is fired at D. The line A B C D is a prolongation of the axis of the gun; it is the line of aim, but it is not the line of fire; all the shots are travelling aslant this line, as shown by the arrows. There are thus two directions to be distinguished. There is the row of successive shots, and there is the path of any one shot. These two directions enclose an angle. It may be called an aberration angle, because it is due to the motion of the source, but it need not give rise to any aberration. True direction may still be perceived from the point of view of the receiver.

To prove this let us attend to what is happening at the target. The first shot is supposed to be entering at A, and if the target is stationary will leave it at Y. A marker looking along Y A will see the position whence the shot was fired. This may be likened to a stationary observer looking at a moving star. He sees it where and as it was when the light started on its long journey. He does not see its present position, but there is no reason why he should. He does not see its physical state or anything as it is now. He sees it as it was when it sent the information which he has just received. There is no aberration caused by motion of source.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1. Shots or Disturbances with Momentum from a Moving Gun.]

But now let the receiver be moving at same pace as the gun, as when two grappled ships are firing into each other. The motion of the target carries the point Y forward, and the shot A leaves it at Z, because Z is carried to where Y was. So in that case the marker looking along Z A will see the gun, not as it was when firing, but as it is at the present moment; and he will see likewise the row of shots making straight for him. This is like an observer looking at a terrestrial object. Motion of the earth does not disturb ordinary vision.

Fig. 2 shows as nearly the same sort of thing as possible for the case of emitted waves. The tube is a source emitting a succession of disturbances without momentum. A B C D may be thought of as horizontally flying birds, or as crests of waves, or as self-swimming torpedoes; or they may even be thought of as bullets, if the gun stands still every time it fires, and only moves between whiles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2. Waves or Disturbances without Momentum from a Moving Source.]

The line A B C D is now neither the line of fire nor the line of aim: it is simply the locus of disturbances emitted from the successive positions 1 2 3 4.

A stationary target will be penetrated in the direction A Y, and this line will point out the correct position of the source when the received disturbance started. If the target moves, a disturbance entering at A may leave it at Z, or at any other point according to its rate of motion; the line Z A does not point to the original position of the source, and so there will be aberration when the target moves. Otherwise there would be none.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3. Beam from a Revolving Lighthouse.]

Now Fig. 2 also represents a parallel beam of light travelling from a moving source, and entering a telescope or the eye of an observer. The beam lies along A B C D, but this is not the direction of vision. The direction of vision, to a stationary observer, is determined not by the locus of successive waves, but by the path of each wave. A ray may be defined as the path of a labelled disturbance. The line of vision is Y A 1, and coincides with the line of aim; which in the projectile case (Fig. 1) it did not.

The case of a revolving lighthouse, emitting long parallel beams of light and brandishing them rapidly round, is rather interesting. Fig.

3 may a.s.sist the thinking out of this case. Successive disturbances A, B, C, D, lie along a spiral curve, the spiral of Archimedes; and this is the shape of the beams, as seen illuminating the dust particles, though the pitch of the spiral is too gigantic to be distinguished from a straight line. At first sight it might seem as if an eye looking along those curved beams would see the lighthouse slightly out of its true position; but it is not so. The true rays or actual paths of each disturbance are truly radial; they do not coincide with the apparent beam. An eye looking at the source will not look tangentially along the beam, but will look along A S, and will see the source in its true position. It would be otherwise for the case of projectiles from a revolving turret.

Thus, neither translation of star nor rotation of sun can affect direction. There is no aberration so long as the receiver is stationary.