Evening star., 1934-08-23
Tiniest Particles
Comprise Ether,
Scientist Believes
Jesuit Group, Meeting
Here, Hears Priest E1-
pound Concept of Space.
BY THOMAS r.. HENRY.

BY THOMAS r. HENRY.
NEW concept of the ether
" the hypothetical what-is-it
~ that fills nothingneSs-was
4 a presented before the Amer
ican Association of Jesuit sci-
entists meeting at Georgetown Univer-
sity yesterday by Rev. j. Joseph Lynch
of Fordham University.
He pictured the vast expanses of
space through which light travels from
the stars as containing vast numbers
of very diffusely distributed particles
thousands of times smaller than elec-
irons and so small that even the pho
ton, the particle of light, is made up
of great number of them. Although
the "ether particle" is far too minute
ever to be detected by the most refined
observation, Father Lynch said, there
is experimental evidence which rem
ders its existence highly probable-or,
at least, not impossible
Wave Theory Is Cited.
In the first place, he pointed out,
light travels and at a measurable speed
If the sun suddenly should cease to
exist it would be about eight minutes
anything about it, because it takes
that long for the radiation of the
sun to penetrate as far as the earth.
The generally held concept of the
nature of light now is that it is COM
posed of the tiny, bullet-like parti-
cles - photons - moving at terrific
speed. There is nothing to prevent
particle moving through a COM
plete vacuum, but light, mysteriously
enough, acts both like a speeding
bullet and a wave-just like wave
motion set up by dropping a stone in
a pond. A wave must have something
material to move through, as sound
wave moves through air or the wave
set up by the stone moves through
water.
So, Father Lynch held, the concept
of ether cannot be entirely abandoned
and none of the proponents of the
so-called new physics" actually have
abandoned it, although they have tried
to explain the phenomena OF light
without it. The only properties this
unknown form of matter must pos
sess, Father Lynch said, is that Of ex-
treme tenuousness and that of peing
capable only of a transverse rather
than longitudinal motion.
The wave motion always is at right
angles to the path of the disturbing
force. 1t need not, he said, be con-
tinuous. The infinitely minute par
ticles may be very thinly diffused
Perhaps they are being rained into
space by the sun and other stars,
which very slowly through the aeons
are loosing their mass through the
melting away by radiation.
The concept of ether, Father Lynch
explains, first was introduced about
the beginning of the eighteenth CEN
tury as necessary to account for the
wave-like character of light. 1t was
pictured as very peculiar stuff, indeed
"a solid filling all space so hard that
it was absolutely incompressible, but
at the same time so tenuouS that 1t
offered no resistance whatever. Even
the widest vagaries of the new
physics have not called for such a
paradox as this, and, Father Lynch
said, probably no outstanding phys
icist has been willing to subscribe to
the solid ether postulate for some
years past
Accounts for Wave Motion.
1t has been only within the last
century, he said, that physicists have
recognized that even the comparatively
dense atmosphere actually was made
up of material particles which could
be weighed and measured. He pic
tured an ether made up of his hy-
pothetical infra-photon particles just
as the gases of the atmposphere are
made up of atoms. 1t is not neces-
sary to postulate, he said, that the
ether fills the intertices between the
atoms of solid matter in order to
account for the wave motion of light.
He believes that this wave motion
might be communicated to the denser
substance from the lighter, just as
the vibrations of a sound wave can
be passed on from the air to wall.
If the movement of light was en-
tirely bullet-like through empty
space, Father Lynch said, its passage
from sun to earth probably would be
instantaneous instead of requiring an
appreciable interval. That it sets up
a traverse motion, he pointed out, is
shown definitely by its property Of
polarization, by which a beam can
be split. But the nature of the
photons, knots" of his more minute
particles, is a matter of considerable
disagreement between the foremost
| living authorities. Thus, one school,
led by the French physicist De Brog-
lie, pictures them as not material at
all, but as the reinforcement resulting
from two light waves coming together.
This can be pictured, he said, by
the analogy of two tuning forks struck
! at the same time so that sound waves
sent out come together, resulting in
higher pitched and accelerated beats.
The other school, the so-called Hell
senberg school. looks upon the photon
! as a definite material particle, al