Electricity and Matter
The Relation Between Matter and Electricity
“In these Lectures given at Yale University in May, 1903, I have attempted to discuss the bearing of the recent advances made in Electrical Science on our views of the Constitution of Matter and the Nature of Electricity; two questions which are probably so intimately connected, that the solution of the one would supply that of the other. A characteristic feature of recent Electrical Researches, such as the study and discovery of Cathode and Rontgen Rays and Radio-active Substances, has been the very special degree in which they have involved the relation between Matter and Electricity. In choosing a subject for the Silliman Lectures, it seemed to me that a consideration of the bearing of recent work on this relationship might be suitable, especially as such a discussion suggests multitudes of questions which would furnish admirable subjects for further investigation by some of my hearers.”
The Power of The Ether
“The view I wish to put before you is that it is not merely a part of the mass of a body which arises in this way, but that the whole mass of any body is just the mass of ether surrounding the body which is carried along by the Faraday tubes associated with the atoms of the body. In fact, that all mass is mass of the ether, all momentum, momentum of the ether, and all kinetic energy, kinetic energy of the ether. This view, it should be said, requires the density of the ether to be immensely greater than that of any known substance.”
– Thomson, J. J. (Joseph John), Sir, 1856-1940
Source: Archive.org
