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On the other hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single and double refraction, and all manner of strange organic compounds. "Transparency: a state or quality of body which permits all rays of light to pass through," he defined for me. "That is what I am seeking.
Lamé, though a prudent mathematician, wrote: "The existence of the ethereal fluid is incontestably demonstrated by the propagation of light through the planetary spaces, and by the explanation, so simple and so complete, of the phenomena of diffraction in the wave theory of light"; and he adds: "The laws of double refraction prove with no less certainty that the ether exists in all diaphanous media."
Eternity is figured as white light light in its quintessence. Life, mundane life, is as a dome of glass, which becomes many-coloured by its prismatic diffraction of the white light: its various prisms reflect eternity at different angles.
When the distant slit is illuminated by a candle flame, instead of the more intense electric light, or when a distant platinum wire raised to a white heat by an electric current is employed, substantially the same effects are observed. Application of the Wave-theory to the Phenomena of Diffraction.
Spectra are, however, formed by diffraction, wherein the distribution of both heat and light is different from that produced by the prism. These diffractive spectra have been examined with great skill by Draper and Langley. In the prismatic spectrum the less refrangible rays are compressed into a much smaller space than in the diffraction spectrum.
Corresponding telescopic facilities are enjoyed. The chief instrument at the station, a 13-inch equatoreal by Clark, shows the fainter parts of the Orion nebula, photographed at Harvard College in 1887, by which the dimensions given to it in Bond's drawing are doubled; stars are at times seen encircled by half a dozen immovable diffraction rings, up to twelve of which have been counted round Alpha Centauri; while on many occasions no available increase of magnifying power availed to bring out any wavering in the limbs of the planets.
What is the nature of this energy? The question does not appear to have been yet solved. It certainly appears, according to Professors Haga and Wind and to Professor Sommerfeld, that with the X rays curious experiments of diffraction may be produced. Dr Barkla has shown also that they can manifest true polarization.
It was natural that a geometer who had so elegantly connected the laws of simple refraction which light undergoes in its passage through the atmosphere, and the laws of double refraction which it is subject to in the course of its passage through certain crystals, with the action of attractive and repulsive forces, should not have abandoned this route, before he recognized the impossibility of arriving by the same path, at plausible explanations of the phenomena of diffraction and polarization.
After having put himself on his guard against the effects of diffraction, that is to say, against the scattering that light undergoes when it passes the terminal angles of bodies, the illustrious astronomer proved, in 1786, that objects can be seen well defined by means of pencils of light whose diameter does not equal five tenths of a millimetre.
The most interesting phenomena of diffraction are those presented by gratings, as are technically denominated the systems of linear and very narrow openings situated parallel to one another and at very small intervals. A system of this kind may be realized by tracing with a diamond, for instance, on a pane of glass equidistant lines very close together.
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