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Updated: May 14, 2025
The atom may be regarded as a sort of solar system in which electrons in considerable numbers gravitate round the sun formed by the positive ion. It may happen that certain of these electrons are no longer retained in their orbit by the electric attraction of the rest of the atom, and may be projected from it like a small planet or comet which escapes towards the stellar spaces.
With quickening breath they watch the electrons flame and fall, seeing the ultimate constitution of matter almost within their grasp, and yet they do not permit their dreams to blind or weaken them in their wearisome, hopeless quest. They have their heroism for humanity, too. They meet death face to face, as they pry close into the cause of decay, the secret of morbid growth.
The Earth moulds itself from activities that it contains within itself. Running through the whole mighty swarm of electrons we call the Earth is a tendency to order, organisation, and system. The myriad millions of ultimate particles in their all-togetherness and from their interaction upon one another become possessed of an imperative urge towards excellence.
An object which can be located in every moment of some duration will be called a 'uniform' object throughout that duration. Ordinary physical objects appear to us to be uniform objects, and we habitually assume that scientific objects such as electrons are uniform. But some sense-objects certainly are not uniform. A tune is an example of a non-uniform object.
It is true that the pattern of the paper has changed, for the very pattern of the world has changed; we are told that it is not made of atoms like the dots but of electrons like the spirals. Scientific men of the first rank have seen a table move by itself, and walk upstairs by itself.
It is, as I have already said, as if reality were made of ether, atoms or electrons, but we mustn't think so literally. The term 'energy' doesn't even pretend to stand for anything 'objective. It is only a way of measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their changes on a simple formula.
This seems to show that in certain cases the positive electrons move instead of the negative, and Professor Lorentz confesses that up to the present he can find no valid argument against this. See Archives Néerlandaises 1906, parts 1 and 2. Other conceptions, bolder still, are suggested by the results of certain interesting experiments.
Molecules are very small. If a drop of water were magnified to the size of the globe, the molecules would be seen to be less than the size of a cricket ball! Atoms are much smaller. "The atoms in a drop of water outnumber the drops in an Atlantic Ocean." Electrons are much smaller still about "a thousand-million-million times smaller than atoms."
Swirling past the ship, gleaming in the reflected sunlight like iron filings moving to the motion of a magnet, were the waves upon waves of cosmic dust tiny free electrons, ions, particles of gas; free of the heavier atmosphere, themselves invisible, they formed in their billions into bright clouds around the ship; pale, swirling veils of mist.
Catholicism is founded on such visions and no religion worthy of the name is without its story of angels. New aspects of matter have laid many materialistic theories in the dust, the mysterious potencies of matter which the latest science is revealing, the energy of electrons, and radium are giving us a new science of super-sensual physics and with it new vistas of thought.
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