[Sir Oliver Lodge is broadcasting from London a course of lectures on "Ether and Reality." These lectures are of remarkable general interest in that they challenge many popular and some scientific theories. "The Radio Times" has acquired the exclusive serial rights and will publish four of Sir Oliver's lectures in their broadcast form. The first appears below. Subsequently all seven lectures will he published as one of the volumes of Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton's "Broadcast library."]
What fills empty space? What is there between the worlds? Not air: the atmosphere soon atom, and beyond there ocean nothing—nothing appreciable, only intense cold.
"wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,"
says Rudyard Kipling, concerning one Tomlinson. Well, that is the ether; it is absolutely cold. We on the comfortable earth are five hundred Fahrenheit degrees warmer. Five hundred degrees hotter would be red-hot: five hundred degrees colder is the temperature of space.
Space is full' not of matter, but of ether. The ether is other than matter; and it fills all space in the most thorough manner: there is nothing no omnipresent and no efficient in the physical universe.
We employ the ether every day and every minute of our lives; it is the very breath of our material existence but it escapes what are called our five waves, and on we usually know little about it. Some few even deny its existence. This is ungrateful and should be remedied.
The first thing to realize about the ether is its absolute continuity. Let me explain. Matter is discontinuous; it consists of portions with gaps between. You see this clearly enough in the stars; they are bodies separated by wide, empty spaces, they are not massed together. There most be a reason for this; the reason is partly known, but is not easy we will be satisfied with the fact that it is so.
Matter is full of discontinuity. The universe consists mostly of empty space: the portions of matter in apace are all well separated from each other in proportion to their size. Fire an infinitely long-range projectile into the sky. and the chances are it will not hit anything. Lord. Kelvin reckoned that the chance of hitting anything by such a projectile was about the name as the chance of hitting a bird if you fired a gun at random. That is one of the first things to realize about matter: there are great gaps between its particles.
You may say that is all very well for the sky and the stars and planets; but what about the earth? What about a piece of rock, or furniture, or any solid object? Do you mean to say that the particles of a body like that are widely separated, with great spaces between them in proportion to their size, and that a straight line might penetrate them deeply without encountering a particle.
Yes, I do that is what I mean by the die. continuity of matter. It is discontinuous on n small scale as well as on a large scale. It does not appear so, but that is only because our senses are not fine enough to tell us about things on a small scale: we can only see things on a big scale.
A microscope is of some assistance, but nothing like sufficient: no microscope, however powerful, can show us an atom, still less can it show us how an atom is composed and how far apart its ultimate particles are: we know this otherwise and indirectly. It is, however, common knowledge, now, that matter is built up of minute electric charges, both negative and positive, which are called electrons and protons. It is also known that these electric units arc so extremely minute that they are separated from(Continued overleaf.)
