Electric Theory of Matter

BY SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S.

Copied from an article in Harper Magazine 1904

ELECTRICITY is of two kinds, positive and negative, each repels itself and attracts the other. So begins or might begin every text-book of Electricity since the era of Gilbert of Colchester in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The most freely movable kind of electricity is the negative variety: a body containing an excess of negative is said to be negatively charged; a body with a defect of negative is what we are accustomed to call positively charged. Anything which possesses the two kinds in equal quantities is not charged at all, but is neutral. So virtually taught that eminent man Benjamin Franklin a century and a half ago. Electricity is not a form of energy, any more than water is a form of energy. Water may be a vehicle of energy when at a high level or in motion: so may electricity. Electricity cannot be manufactured, as heat can, it can only be moved from place to place, like water; and its energy must be in the form of motion or of strain. Electricity under strain constitutes "charge"; electricity in locomotion constitutes a current and magnetism; electricity in vibration constitutes light. What electricity itself is we do not know, but it may perhaps be a form or aspect of matter. So have taught for thirty years the disciples of ClerkMaxwell. Now we can go one step further and say, Matter is composed of electricity, and of nothing else,--a thesis which I wish to explain and partially justify. First we must ask what is positive electricity? and the answer is still we do not know. For myself I do not even guess,-beyond supposing it to be a mode of manifestation, or a differentiated portion, of the continuous and all-pervading Ether. It seems to exist in lumps the size of the atoms of matter; and no portion of it less in bulk than an atom has ever been isolated, nor appears likely to be isolated. But although it may have bulk, it appears as if it had no appreciable mass: the massiveness or inertia of the atom is probably due to something else, in fact to the possession of negative charges in equal amount. This part of the doctrine is not yet certain. More investigation is urgently needed into the meaning and properties of positive electricity. Meanwhile we shall only be following the lead of Professor J. J. Thomson if we assume that a unit of positive electricity has a massiveness (or what is often

inaccurately called "weight") either zero or very small, most probably very small; perhaps about one per cent. of the mass of some atoms of matter may be due to the positive electricity which they contain. At the same time it appears probable that the space occupied by a unit of positive electricity is not small compared with the size of a material atom. Its range, or sphere of influence, may be said to determine that size. But concerning negative electricity we know a great deal more. This exists in excessively minute particles, sometimes called electrons and sometimes called corpuscles: these are thrown off the negatively charged terminal in a vacuum tube, and they fly with tremendous speed till they strike something. When they strike they can propel as well as heat the target, and they can likewise make it emit a phosphorescent glow: especially if it be made of glass or precious stones. If the target is a very massive metal like platinum, the sudden stoppage of the flying electrons which encounter it causes the production of the ethereal pulses known as X-rays. Electrons are not very easy to stop however; and a fair proportion of them can penetrate not only wood and paper, but sheets of such metals as aluminum, and other moderately thin obstacles. That is because they are extremely small, much smaller than the atoms of matter. If a magnet be brought near a stream of flying electrons they are deflected by the magnetic force, as a rifle bullet is deflected by a wind; they will then miss the target at which they were aimed, and nay strike another. By measuring their deflection when their speed is known it is possible to estimate the mass of each particle; and if any stream consisted of particles of different masses it would be possible thus to sort or fan or winnow them out: the massive ones keeping nearly straight and the lighter ones being blown aside, somewhat as a cork projectile is more easily deflected than a bullet. Determinations made in this sort of way, supplemented by many other refined and most ingenious measurements conducted in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, England, have resulted in the following knowledge:(1) Each electron has a definite charge of electricity, viz. the same charge as is conveyed by each single atom when a current is passed through a chemically conducting liquid. Every electron has also a definite and uniform mass, which is about 1-800th of that of an atom of hydrogen -hitherto the lightest known form of matter. (2) From every kind of material the same and 10 other kind of electron can be obtained, and we have reason for asserting that no other kind exists. (3) Electric currents are always due to the locomotion of these little electric charges, they permeate and make their way through metals, being handed on from one atom to the next, as a fire bucket is passed

from hand to hand. This is metallic conduction. Liquid conduction is different: the electrons travel with the atoms in liquids, and hence travel slowly, being jostled by the crowd, and being laden with the heavy atom which they convey or propel, as a pony (or a flea-in mass a pony, but in bulk a flea) might drag a heavy wagon through crowded streets; until, at the terminal station, it is unharnessed and allowed to trot into its stable: which is what happens when the boundary between liquid and metallic conductors is reached. Electrons become still more emancipated however in rarefied gases, which act as a cleared racecourse or like a free range for flight; and then it is possible to find them flying at prodigious speed, even as high as a hundred thousand miles per second, and sometimes faster still, but never quite so fast as light. (4) Whenever an electron is suddenly started or stopped, or made to turn a corner, it disturbs the ether through which it had been quietly moving, and excites a ripple in it. These ethereal ripples constitute radiation, and the best known variety of them we call "light". With this we have been familiar for a long time, because of our happening to possess eyes-instruments for the ready appreciation of ethereal ripples. We used not to know the reason however for the production of light, we know now that it is due to the sudden change of motion, either in speed or direction, of an electron; and probably to 10 other causes. (5) All electric charges possesses the extraordinary property of selfinduction, by reason of the magnetic field which it generates wherever it moves; and so far back as 1881 J. J. Thomson showed that this was equivalent to the possession of mass or inertia, and calculated its value. The mass or massiveness of an electric charge depends upon its concentration, the more concentrated it is the greater is its effective inertia. The charge in an electron is very small but is extreme]y concentrated, that is to say it exists only as a very minute nucleus; and in order to explain the manifestation of the observed mass of 1-800th part of a hydrogen atom, by so trifling a quantity of electricity, it is necessary to suppose that it is concentrated into a space one hundred thousandth of the diameter of a material atom. This is the size which is at present accepted for an electron. It is quite the smallest thing known. Eight hundred of them would, so to speak, "weigh" as much as a hydrogen atom, and would deal the same blow if stopped, and generally be equivalent to it; but they have remarkably little bulk, for if they were packed tightly together-an amount of packing probably quite impossible even to approach a thousand million million of them would be required to fill completely the space occupied by a hydrogen or any other atom. Inside a hydrogen atom electrons are therefore very sparsely distributed, for there is manifestly plenty of room for 800; more room indeed than there is, in the solar system for the sun and planets; but some atoms contain many more than this number, and the tightest

packing known exists in the atoms of the, radioactive substances, Uranium, Radium, and the like, each atom of which contains something like two hundred thousand electrons. Even this is very far from tight packing, the intervening spaces are still very great compared with their size, but they are getting too crowded to be comfortable, and nature does not seem to have evolved any permanent atom more tightly packed than these. Moreover even these are not quite stable and permanent, every now and then a particle escapes and flies away, from one or another atom, into space; so that if we take a perceptible quantity of the substance---which of course consists of many billion atoms---a considerable number of particles are always being shot off from it; hence a substance composed of these heavy atoms maintains a continuous bombardment, emitting rays, analogous to those Which Crookes had so strikingly exhibited in 1879 in an exceptionally high vacuum tube. The experimental discovery of spontaneous, radioactivity is, due to M. Henri Becquerel in Paris in the year 1896, one year after Roentgen's singular discovery of the existence and electrical generation of X-rays. Our present view of an atom of matter therefore is something like the following: Picture to one's self an individualized mass of positive electricity, diffused uniformly over a space as big as an atom---say a sphere of which two hundred million could lie edge to edge in an inch, or such that a million million million million could be crowded tightly together into an apothecary's grain. Then imagine, disseminated throughout this small spherical region, a number of minute specks of negative electricity; all exactly alike, and all flying about vigorously, each of them repelling every other, but all attracted and kept in their orbits by the mass of positive electricity in which they are embedded and flying about. In so far as an atom is impenetrable to other atoms, its parts act on the sentinel principle, not on the crowd principle. There are two ways of keeping hostile people out of an open building: one is to fill it with your own supporters, another is to place an armed policeman at every door. The electrons are, extremely energetic and forcible, though in bulk mere specks or centers of force. Every speck is exactly like every other, and each is of the size and weight appropriate to the electron. Different atoms, that is atoms of different kinds of matter, are all believed to be composed in the same sort of way; but if the atoms of a substance are such that each possesses 23 times as many electrons as hydrogen has, we call it sodium. If each atom has 200 times as many as hydrogen, we call it lead or quicksilver. If it has still more than that, it begins to be conspicuously radioactive. It would seem as if the excessive radiation which follows upon an overcrowded condition were caused by the probability of collision or encounter between the parts of an atom: just as every now and then among

the stars in the sky two bodies encounter each other, and a great blaze of radiation, or temporary star, results. Even in atoms of which the parts are sparsely distributed such occurrences are not impossible, though they are less frequent, and accordingly it is to be expected that every kind of matter may be radioactive to a very small extent: a probability which is now justified for most metals, by direct experiment with very sensitive means of detection. Indeed so far as radiation necessarily accompanies any change of motion of an electron, and in so far as in every atom some electrons are describing orbits and are therefore subject to centripetal acceleration, a certain amount of atomic radiation is inevitable, on the electric theory of matter. In most cases it is imperceptibly small, but it must be there, and accordingly an atom must be slowly undermining its own constitution by the gradual emission of its internal or intrinsic energy in the form of ether-waves. Thus then it is reasonable to expect that, every now and then, an atom will break up or collapse or divide into parts. This process has been observed by Rutherford of Montreal. The radiation from many of the radioactive substances, on being analyzed by a magnet, is found to be separable into three parts: (1) the so-called rays, which are the shot-off electrons already mentioned; (2) some, ??? rays, which appear to represent an ethereal pulse,---an analogue as it. were of the sound-wave caused by the explosion or act of firing; and (3) more important than either, a third kind of projectile called the ??? rays, which are newly formed atoms of foreign matter or new substance. These are pitched away with extraordinary violence as the atom breaks up, they produce by their bombardment of zinc sulphide the bright little flashes seen in Crookes's, spinthariscope, and they likewise generate heat when they are stopped by any obstacle. They thus keep the vessel in which they are enclosed at a temperature a degree or two above surrounding bodies, at least in the case of the most active known substances, radium and its emanation. For radium converts its own intra-atomic energy into heat at so surprising a rate that it could, if all of the heat were economized and none allowed to escape, raise its own weight of water from ordinary temperature to the boiling-point every hour. The number of atoms breaking up in any perceptible portion of radium salt must be reckoned in millions per second; nevertheless the proportion of atoms which are thus undergoing transformation at any one time is extremely small. If they could be seen individually most of them would appear quiescent and stable. Of every ten thousand atoms, if a single one breaks up and flings away a portion of itself once a year, that would be enough to account for all the activity observed, even in the case of so exceptionally active a substance as radium; hence the apparent

stability of ordinary matter is not surprising. The thus projected atomic fragments were measured by Rutherford, who found them deflected by a magnet in the opposite direction to the electron projectiles, and were therefore proved to be positively charged; but they are deflected so slightly that they must be very massive bodies, 1600 times as massive as an electron, or twice the atomic weight of hydrogen. A substance with this atomic weight is known, viz. Helium; and surely enough the discoverer of Helium, Sir W. Ramsay, working with Mr. Soddy, a recent colleague of Rutherford, has witnessed the Helium spectrum gradually develop in a tube into which nothing but radium emanations had been put. Matter then appears to be composed of positive and negative electricity and nothing else. All its newly discovered, as well as all its long-known, properties can thus be explained:--- even the longstanding puzzle of "cohesion" shows signs of giving way. The only outstanding still intractable physical property is "gravitation," and no satisfactory theory of the nature of gravitation has been so far forthcoming. I doubt however if it is far away. It would seem to be a slight but quite uniform secondary or residual effect due to the immersion of a negative electron in a positive atmosphere. It is a mutual force between one atomic system and another, which is proportional to the number of electrons in each. It is quite doubtful whether it is displayed to be an isolated or disembodied electron, but the act of immersing an electron in its attracting atmosphere may develop it. We know too little about electricity, especially about positive electricity, to be able to justify or expand such a guess; but, as a guess and no more, I venture to throw it out: believing it to be a static residual strain effect not due even to corpuscular motion, or to any other modifiable circumstance, but inherent in the constitution of each atom, whether it be an entire complex or be, broken up into simpler substances. If it be true that every atom occupies the same volume of space, then gravitation might seem to be an effect depending on the crowdedness of electrons; but when an atom, breaks up into unequal parts, the smaller portion must in that case undergo considerable expansion, and that would be inconsistent with the constancy of gravitation, if it depended on crowdedness: hence I think it more probable that it depends on some interaction between positive and negative electricity, and that it is generated when these two come together, that is whenever an atom of matter is formed. The formation of an atom of matter out of electricity is a new idea, and has as yet no experimental justification. The breaking up of complex atoms into simpler forms, and the partial resolution of an atom into dust or constituent electrons, is all that is as yet experimentally justifiable and all therefore that ought to be mentioned; but the inverse process seems to me naturally to follow, and I look to the time when

some, laboratory workers will exhibit matter newly formed from stuff

which is not matter, instead of as now only recognizing the transmutation of some pre-existing complex atoms into simpler atoms. The evolution of matter was glimpsed as a brilliant dream by Sir W. Crookes, when he presided over the Chemical Section of the British Association in Birmingham in 1886: he may Yet live to see his dream come true. The family relationship between the atomic weights of the elements, described by Mendelejeff and others, paved the way for and suggested the vision: scientific. progress ever Since has brought it nearly to realization; and the splendid mathematical theories of J. J. Thomson and Larmor, concerning the properties and powers of electric charges, have now rendered possible a far greater precision of imagination than was then possible, and have engendered the conception of an atom of matter composed wholly of electricity:---which thus steps on to the stage as the fundamental and really atomic substance. The Physical basis of life still eludes us; and until we are willing to look outside our material environment into another order of things, the full truth concerning life and mind will I believe continue to be unrecognizable. But let us always remember that both life and mind have a physical basis, a complete material aspect: it may be possible for the mechanism of this aspect to be dragged to the light of day and displayed, perhaps as clearly and definitely as we hope before long to be able to display the constitution of matter itself. Let not the reader of this article assume that it represents more than the gropings of a searcher after knowledge, illuminated by the light of his brethren, trained quickly to seize and understand, and trying to act as an instructed guide or interpreter amid the haze; though he recognizes, and would have others recognize, that the haze has not yet lifted, and that accordingly his statements must be understood as nothing more than an approximation to the truth.

A FEW SALIENT DATES Crookes, Cathode Rays 1879 Roentgen, X-rays 1895 Becquerel, Radioactivity 1896 Madame Curie, Radium 1898 Curie, Heat-production 1903 Larmor, Electrons 1895 JT. J. Thomson, Electrons 1899 Rutherford, Disintegration 1903

A FEW SALIENT DATES

Crookes, Cathode Rays 1879