where the acceleration is sufficient for it to radiate an appreciable energy to a distance by means of the acceleration wave, it is probably necessary to bring in, by other terms in the equation of motion of the electron, some forces by which it can receive again the energy which it radiates, and which disappear in the case of quasi-stationary motion. It does not seem, however, in any experimental case that these corrective terms can become appreciable.
From the same point of view, the electrons in periodic motion in the material atom are necessarily subject throughout their closed orbits to accelerations which are accompanied by a radiation of energy borrowed from the internal electric and magnetic energy of the atom. This radiation must be extremely small, as in the simple case of several cathode corpuscles circulating at equal distances in the same orbit, and can be compensated for by energy obtained from external radiation. We can suppose that this continual radiation, much more important naturally when the atom, as the result of external shock, is displaced from its most stable equilibrium, is a cause of decay to the atomic structure and which at the end of a certain length of time ought necessarily to give the structure a fundamental rearrangement, as a top falls when its rotation has sufficiently diminished in velocity. A condition of instability is thus reached, the consecutive rearrangement being accompanied by a violent projection of certain electrified centres from the atom. This conception furnishes at least an image of radioactive phenomena, and the successive transformations in the life of an atom, an hypothesis of which has been advanced by Rutherford. It seems, however, that it is not necessary to admit a probable decay of atomic structures, sensible only for radioactive substances. The fact that the dispersion takes place as a function of the time according to a rigorous exponential law, the quantity which is destroyed in a given time being exactly proportional to the quantity present, seems to indicate that the substance not destroyed remains identical with itself. Perhaps the reorganization of the atomic structure might result from its accidental passage through a particularly unstable configuration, the probability that a like configuration should be reproduced being independent, in the mean, of the previous history of the atom, and the mean life of the latter would be short in proportion as this probability is great.
(41) Internal Energy and Heat set Free. A very simple calculation shows also that the stock of energy represented by the electric and magnetic fields surrounding the electrons contained in an atom is sufficiently great to supply for ten million years the evolution of heat discovered by Curie in the radium salts. As it appears now well established that the mean life of a radium atom is of the order of a thousand years, it results that the ten-thousandth part only of this reserve of energy is utilized during this especially active period in
