The evening times., 1898-09-14
A NEW GAS.
1t May Prove TO Be the S0-Cailed
Ether of All Space.
(From toe Electrical Review.

| lf rom toe EiSeIFfsdl RSSifND
| The feature of the fiftieth meeting of
| the American Association for the Ad-
! vancement of Science, held at Boston last
| week, was the presentation of a pre-
| liminary paper on "A New Gas" by Mr..
| Charles F. Brush. the well-known cleo
! trical inventor and scientist.
The gas is a constituent of the atmos-
| phere, and is found absorbed in many
substances Its chief characteristic thus
| far experimentally determined Is enor-
nous heat conductivity at low pressure.
! Mr.. Brush showed that its conductivity.
! even when mixed with large access OF
! other gases, is something like a hundred
times that of hydrogen, the best gaseous
! conductor heretofore known; and con-
| lectures that the conductivity of the
/ pure gas viii be found a thousand or
more times that of hydrogen.
Mr.. Brush referred to a protectors pa
| per on heat transmission by gases, read
| by him at last years meeting of the as
socia ton. and embodied some of its ma
| terial in a curve chart showing the heat
| cOnductiyity of several known gases at
| only a few millionths of atmospheric pres
sure, and also that of the new gas in
| several degrees of impurity. Mr.. Brush
| discovered the new gas nearly a year and
| a half ago. while looking for occluded hy-
| drDgen in glass. He found not only hy-
| drogen. but something of vastly greater
| Importance.
After many months of experiment he
! has recently effected partial separation of
! the new gas from the air by diffusion in
a first diffusion the heat conductivity of
air was something like a hundredfold.
| MT Brush expects TO obtain the gas in
state of approximate purity by successive
diffusons OF al.
\ table of figures was exhibited, show
| ing the molecular weight. density, spe-
cilic heat, relative mean molecular veloc-
ity and heat conductivity of the gases
whose heat conductive curves appeared
| II the chart; and attention directed
to the evident close relationship between
the heat conductivity and molecular We
Iocily of the gases.
From this relationship some other prop
critics Of the new gas were deducted. TAX
ing the heat conductiyity of the new gas
at a hundred times that of hydrogen, a
very conservative estimate, its mean mo-
lecular velocity at freezing temperature
was calculated to be more than a hum
dred miles per second, and its density
only thousandth part that of hydrogen.
while the specific heat was found 10 be
5000 times greater than that of hydrogen,
the substance having the greatest spe-
Cihc heat heretofore known. These fig
Ures were adduced simply to show the
order of magnitude that may be estab-
lished by further investigation.
1t was shown that gas having attri-
bGtes anything like those cited could not
possibly be confined to the earth's at
mosphere, and hence the new gas, being
found here, probably extends indefinitely
into space and constitutes an inter-Stellar
atElosphe-e. N recognition of this prob
ability, NJ. Brush has named the new
gas etheri0n, meaning high in the heav-
ems" Some evidence was cited tending
to show that etherion is mixture of at
| least two different gases. and Mr.. Brush
haZarded the conjecture that on further
investigation three or four more gases
will be found, forming one or more
periodic groups of new elements all very
much lighter than hydrogen. The possi-
bility that etherion may be found to be
identical with the so-called ether was
touched upon. and Mr. Brush expressed
the hope that it would be found to ac-
count for at least some of the phenom-
ena heretofore attributed to the ether.