INTRODUCTION
“The facts brought to light by my researches, as well as by those to which they have led, show that, contrary to this belief, matter is not eternal, and can vanish without return. They likewise prove that the atom is the reservoir of a force hitherto unrecognized, although it exceeds by its immensity those forces with which we are acquainted, and that it may perhaps be the origin of most others, notably of electricity and solar heat.”
“It was above all the discovery of radium, long after my first researches, that fixed attention on these questions.”
“To make this book easier to read, the experiments in detail have been brought together at the end of the volume, to which they form a second part. All the plates illustrating the experiments have been drawn or photographed by my devoted assistant, M.F. Michaux. I here express my thanks to him for his daily assistance at my laboratory during the many years over which my researches have extended.”
“Gods and dogmas do not perish in a day. To try to prove that the atoms of all bodies, which were deemed eternal, are not so, gave a shock to all received opinions. To endeavor to show that matter, hitherto considered inert, is the reservoir of a colossal energy, was bound to shock more ideas still.”
“It matters little, in reality, that he who has sown should not reap. It is enough that the harvest grows.”
BOOK I
THE NEW IDEAS ON MATTER
CHAPTER I
THE THEORY OF INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY AND OF THE PASSING AWAY OF MATTER
“The dogma of the indestructibility of matter is one of the very few which modern has received from ancient science without alteration. From the great Roman poet, Lucretius, who made it the fundamental element of his philosophical system, down to the immortal Lavoisier, who established it on bases considered eternal, this sacred dogma was never touched, and no one ever sought to question it.”
“It is several years now since I proved by experiment for the first time that the phenomena observed in substances termed radioactive — such as uranium, the only substance of that kind then known — could be observed in all substances in Nature, and could only be explained by the dissociation of their atoms.” “Substances termed radioactive, such as uranium or radium, simply present in a high degree a phenomenon which all matter possesses to some extent.”
“The atmosphere is now cleared, and few physicists deny that this dissociation of matter — this radioactivity as it is now called — is a universal phenomenon as widely spread throughout the universe as heat or light. Radioactivity is now discovered in nearly everything, and in a recent paper Prof. J.J. Thomson has demonstrated its existence in most substances — water, sand, clay, brick, etc.”
“Force and matter are two different forms of one and the same thing. Matter represents a stable form of intra-atomic energy; heat, light, electricity, etc., represent instable forms of it.”
“chemical species are no more invariable than are living species.”
DESCOBERTA DA “FORÇA FRACA”, CUJO NOME É ARDILOSO, POIS SE TRATA DA FORÇA MAIS FORTE: “To the known forms of energy — heat, light, etc. — there must be added another — matter, or intra-atomic energy. It is characterized by its colossal greatness and its considerable accumulation within very feeble volume.”
“The individuality disappears, and the vortex dissolves in the ether as soon as the forces which maintain its existence cease to act.” Tão vanguardista e ainda atido a nomenclaturas do passado arcano como éter!
“More than one physicist, the illustrious Faraday especially, has endeavored to clear away the duality existing between matter and energy. Some philosophers formerly made the same attempt, by pointing out that matter was only brought home to us by the intermediary of forces acting on our senses.”
“For the classical adage, ‘Nothing is created, nothing is lost’ (attributed to Lavoisier) must be substituted the following: — Nothing is created, but everything is lost.”
“Herbert Spencer in one of the chapters of First Principles, headed ‘Indestructibility of Matter’, which he makes one of the pillars of his system, declares that, ‘Could it be shown, or could it with reason be supposed, that Matter, either in its aggregates or in its units, ever becomes non-existent, it would be needful either to ascertain under what conditions it becomes non-existent, or else to confess that true Science and Philosophy are impossible’. This assertion certainly seems too far-reaching. Philosophy has never found any difficulty in adapting itself to new scientific discoveries. It follows, but does not precede them.”
BOMBA ATÔMICA: “The practical interest of the doctrine of the vanishing of matter, by reason of its transformation into energy, will only appear when means are found of accomplishing with ease the rapid dissociation of substances. When that occurs, an almost unlimited source of energy will be at man’s disposal gratis, and the face of the world will be changed. But we have not yet reached this point.” Um inveterado otimista!
“As matter seemed incapable by itself of quitting the state of repose, recourse was had to various causes, of unknown nature, designated by the term forces, to animate it. Physics counted several which it formerly clearly distinguished from each other, but the advance in science finally welded them into one great entity, Energy, to which the privilege of immortality was likewise conceded.”
“The divinities of old time were replaced by ingenious systems of differential equations.”
CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE DISSOCIATION OF MATTER AND OF INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY
“The public troubles itself very little with the way in which inventions are made, but psychologists will certainly be interested by certain sides of the following account. In fact, they will find therein valuable documents on the birth of beliefs, on the part played, even in laboratories, by suggestions and illusions, and finally on the preponderant influence of prestige considered as a principal element of demonstration.”
“It was, in fact, in 1896 that I caused to be published in the Comptes Rendu de l’Academie des Science, solely for the purpose of establishing priority, a short notice summing up the researches I had been making for 2 years, whence it resulted that light falling on bodies produced radiations capable of passing through material substances. Unable to identify these radiations with anything known, I pointed out in the same note that they must probably constitute some unknown force — an assertion to which I have often returned. To give it a name I called this radiation black light.”
“(1) Radiations of the same family as the cathode rays. They are incapable of refraction or of polarization, and have no kinship with light. These are the radiations which to so-called radioactive substances, such as uranium, constantly emit abundantly and ordinary substances freely.
(2) Infrared radiations of great wavelength which, contrary to all that has hitherto been taught, pass through black paper, ebonite, wood, stone, and, in fact, most non-conducting substances. They are naturally capable of refraction and polarization.
It was not very easy to dissociate these various elements at a time when no one supposed that a large number of bodies, considered absolutely opaque, were, on the contrary, very
transparent to the invisible infrared light, and when the announcement of the experiment of photographing a house in two minutes and in the dark-room through an opaque body would have been deemed absurd.”
“It will be considered, I think, very curious and one of the most instructive chapters in the history of science that for 3 years not one single physicist was to be met with in the whole world who thought of repeating — though they were extraordinarily simple — the experiments of M. Becquerel on the refraction, reflection, and polarization of the uranium rays. On the contrary, the most eminent published ingenious theories to explain this very refraction, reflection, and polarization.
It was a new version of the story of the child with the golden tooth on which the scholars of the day wrote important treatises, till one day it occurred to a skeptic to go see if the said child was really born with a golden tooth. It will be difficult, after such an example, to deny that, in scientific matters, prestige forms the essential element in conviction. We must therefore not scoff too much at those in the Middle Ages who knew no other sources of demonstration than the statements of Aristotle.”
“When the question as to polarization was definitely settled, it took but little time to establish the correctness of the facts stated by me. But it was only after the German physicists Giesel, Meyer, and Schweidler discovered in 1899 that the emissions of radioactive bodies were, like the cathode rays, capable of deviation by a magnet, that the idea of a probable analogy between these phenomena began to spread. Several physicists then took up this study, the importance of which has increased day by day. New facts arose on all sides, and the discovery of radium by Curie gave a great impetus to these researches.
M. de Heen, Prof. of Physics at the University of Liege, and Director of the celebrated Institute of Physics in that town, was the first to accept in its entirety the generalization I had endeavored to establish. Having taken up and developed my experiments, he declared in one of is papers that in point of importance they were on a par with the discovery of x-rays.”
“The generality of the phenomenon of the dissociation of matter would have been noticed much sooner if a number of known facts had been closely examined, but this was not done. These facts, besides, were spread over very different chapters of physics. For example, the loss of electricity occasioned by ultraviolet light had long been known, but one little thought of connecting the fact with the cathode rays. More than 50 years ago N. de St.-Victor saw that, in the dark, salts of uranium caused photographic impression for several months; but as this phenomenon did not seem connected with any known fact, it was put on one side. For a hundred years the gases of flame had been observed to discharge electrified bodies without anyone attempting to examine the cause of this phenomenon. The loss of electric charges through the influence of light had been pointed out several years before, but it was regarded as a fact peculiar to a few metals, without any suspicion of how general and important it was.”
“I have had the satisfaction of seeing, while still alive, the recognition of the facts on which I based the theories which follow. For a long time I had given up all such hope, and more than once had thought of abandoning my researches. They had, in fact, been rather badly received in France. (…) The book of nature is a romance of such passionate interest that the pleasure of spelling out a few pages repays one for the trouble this short decipherment often demands.”
“The discovery of intra-atomic energy cannot, however, be quite assimilated to that of the universality of the dissociation of matter. This universal dissociation is a fact, the existence of intra-atomic energy is only an interpretation.”
“It is natural enough that one should not be a prophet in one’s own country. It is sufficient to be a little of one elsewhere. The importance of the results brought to light by my researches was very quickly understood abroad. Out of the different studies they called forth, I shall confine myself to reproducing a few fragments.” Muito autocentrado o sr. Le Bon! A ciência e a filosofia são assim mesmo.
“Rutherford in America, Nedon in France, de Heen in Belgium, Lenard in Austria, Elseter and Geitel in Switzerland have successfully followed in the lines of Gustave Le Bon. Summing up today the experiments made by him for the last 6 years, Gustave Le Bon shows that he has discovered a new force in nature which manifests herself in all bodies.”
“As for chemistry, the whole fabric will be demolished at a blow; and we shall have a tabula rasa on which we may write an entirely new system wherein matter will pass through matter, and ‘elements’ will be shown to be only differing forms of the same substance. But even this will be nothing compared with the results which will follow the
bridging of the space between the material and the immaterial which M. Le Bon anticipates as the result of his discoveries, and which Sir William Crookes seems to have foreshadowed in his address to the Royal Society upon its late reception of the Prince of Wales.”
“The new phenomena I have discovered have cost me too much labor, too much money, and too much annoyance for me not to try to keep a firm hold on a prize obtained with so much difficulty.”
BOOK II
INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY AND THE FORCES DERIVED THEREFROM
CHAPTER I
INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY — ITS MAGNITUDE
“A very simple calculation shows, in fact, that to give a small bullet the speed of dissociation would require a firearm capable of containing 1,340,000 barrels of gunpowder. As soon as the immense speed of the particles emitted was measured by the very simple methods I describe elsewhere, it became evident that an enormous amount of energy is liberated during the dissociation of atoms.”
“We shall see that, if instead of succeeding in dissociating thousandths of a milligram of matter, as at present, we could dissociate a few kilograms, we should possess a source of energy compared with which the whole provision of coal contained in our mines would represent an insignificant total.”
“If this new force — the most widespread and the mightiest of all those of nature — has remained entirely unknown till now, it is because, in the first place, we lacked the reagents necessary for the proof of its existence, and then, because the atomic edifice erected at the beginning of the ages is so stable, so solidly united, that its dissociation — at all events by our present means — remains extremely slight. Were it otherwise the world would have vanished long ago.”
“To reduce the mass of a projectile matters nothing if one arrives at a sufficient increase in speed. This is exactly the tendency of modern musketry, which constantly reduces the caliber of the bullet but endeavors to increase its speed.”
“We can barely exceed a kilometer per second by the means at our disposal, while the speed of radioactive particles is 100,000 times greater. Thence the magnitude of the effects produced. These differences become plain when one knows that a body having a velocity of 100,000 kilometers/second would go from the earth to the moon in less than 4 seconds, while a cannon ball would take about 5 days.”
“The fact of the existence of a considerable condensation of energy within the atoms only seems to jar on us because it is outside the range of things formerly taught us by experience; it should, however, be remarked that, even leaving on one side the facts revealed by radioactivity, analogous concentrations are daily observable. Is it not strikingly evident, in fact, that electricity must exist at an enormous degree of accumulation in chemical compounds, since it is found by the electrolysis of water that one gram of hydrogen possesses an electric charge of 96,000 coulombs?”
“The best static machines in our laboratories hardly give forth 1/10,000 of a coulomb per second. They would have to work unceasingly for a little over 30 years to give the quantity of electricity contained within the atoms of one gram of hydrogen.”
“Cornu pointed out that if it were possible to concentrate a charge of one coulomb on a very small sphere, and to bring it within one centimeter of another sphere likewise having a charge of one coulomb, the force created by this repulsion would equal 918 dynes, or about 9 billion kilograms.”
“The difficulty was not, therefore, in conceiving that a great deal of energy could remain within an atom. It is even surprising that a notion so evident was not formulated long since.”
“One of the most elementary formulas of dynamics teaches us that the energy of a body of constant size can be increased at will simply by increasing its speed. It is therefore possible to imagine a theoretical machine composed of the head of a pin turning round in the bezel of a ring, which, notwithstanding its smallness, should possess, thanks to its rotative force, a mechanical power equal to that of several thousand locomotives.”
“It is important to notice that, although the numbers above arrived at in various ways point out the existence in matter of immense forces — so unforeseen hitherto — they by no means imply that these forces already are at our disposal. In fact the substances which
dissociate quickest, like radium, only disengage very minute quantities of energy. All those millions of kilogram-meters which a simple gram of matter contains amount in reality to very little if, to obtain them, we have to wait millions of years. Suppose a strong box containing several thousand millions of gold dust to be closed by a mechanism which only permits the daily extraction of a milligram of the precious metal. The owner of that strong box, notwithstanding his great wealth, would be in reality very poor, and would remain so, so long as his efforts to discover the secret of the mechanism by which he could open it were unsuccessful.” Mal sabia Le Bon que só levaria pouco mais de 30 anos da publicação do seu livro a descoberta da maneira mais “efetiva” de empregar tamanha energia: para a destruição.
“No more could one say in the days of Galvani that the electrical energy which enabled him to move with difficulty the legs of frogs and to attract small scraps of paper would one day set in motion enormous railway trains. It will perhaps always be beyond our power to totally dissociate the atom, because the difficulties must increase as dissociation advances, but it would suffice if we could succeed in easily dissociating a small part of it. Whether the gram of dissociated matter that we have supposed to be taken from a ton of matter or even more, matters nothing.”
“The power to dissociate matter freely would place at our disposal an infinite source of energy, and would render unnecessary the extraction of that coal. The scholar who discovers the way to liberate economically the forces which matter contains will almost instantaneously change the face of the world. If an unlimited supply of energy were gratuitously placed at the disposal of man he would no longer have to procure it at the cost of arduous labor. The poor would then be on a level with the rich, and there would be an end to all social questions.”
CHAPTER II
TRANSFORMATION OF MATTER INTO ENERGY
“Modern science formerly established a complete separation between matter and energy. The classic ideas on this scission will be found very plainly stated in the following passage of a recent work by Prof. Janet: [não é o filósofo-psicólogo!]
‘…Copper, iron, and coal are forms of matter, mechanical labor and heat are forms of energy. These two worlds are each ruled by one and the same law. Matter and energy can assume various forms without matter ever transforming itself into energy or energy into matter… We can no more conceive energy without matter than we can conceive matter without energy’”
“Other and bolder physicists, like Rutherford, after having admitted the principles of intra-atomic energy, remain in doubt. This is what the latter writes in a paper later than his book on radioactivity:
It would be desirable to see appear some kind of chemical theory to explain the facts, and to enable us to know whether the energy is borrowed from the atom itself or from external sources
(Archives des Sciences Physiques a Genieve, 1905, p. 53).”
“The fact is that the scientific ideas which rule the minds of scholars at various epochs have all the solidarity of religious dogmas. Very slow to be established, they are very slow likewise to disappear. New scientific truths have, assuredly, experience and reason as a basis, but they are only propagated by prestige — that is, when they are enunciated by scholars whose official position gives them prestige in the eyes of the scientific public. Now, it is this very category of scholars which not only does not enunciate them, but employs its authority to combat them. Truths of such capital importance as Ohm’s law, which governs the whole of electricity, and the law of the conservation of energy which governs all physics, were received, on their first appearance, with indifference or contempt, and remained without effect until the day when they were enunciated anew by scholars endowed with influence.
It is only by studying the history of sciences, so little pursued at the present date, that one succeeds in understanding the genesis of beliefs and the laws governing their diffusion. I have alluded to 2 discoveries which were among the most important of the past century, and which are summarized in two laws, of which one can say that they ought to have appealed to all minds by their marvelous simplicity and their imposing grandeur. Not only did they strike no one, but the most eminent scholars of the epoch did not concern themselves about them except to try to cover them with ridicule.”
“Experiments — even those most convincing in appearance — have never constituted an immediately demonstrable foundation when they clashed with long since accepted ideas. Galileo learned this to his cost when, having brought together all the philosophers of the celebrated University of Pisa, he thought to prove to them by experiment that, contrary to the then accepted ideas, bodies of different weight fell with the same velocity.” “The professors contented themselves with appealing to the authority of Aristotle, and in nowise modified their opinions.”
CHAPTER III
FORCES DERIVED FROM INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY — MOLECULAR FORCES, ELECTRICITY, SOLAR HEAT, ETC.
“electricity is one of the most constant manifestations of the dissociation of matter.”
“For a certain number of years the role of electricity has constantly grown in importance. It is at the base of all chemical reactions, which are more and more considered as electrical reactions. It appears now as a universal force, and the tendency is to connect all other forces with it. That a force of which the manifestations have this importance and universality should have been unknown for thousands of years constitutes one of the most striking facts in the history of science, and is one of those facts we must always bear in mind to understand how we may be surrounded with very powerful forces without perceiving them.
For centuries all that was known about electricity could be reduced to this: that certain resinous substances when rubbed attract light bodies. (…) By extending the friction to larger surfaces might not more intense effects still be produced? This no one thought of inquiring. Ages succeeded each other before there arose a mind penetrating enough to verify by experiment whether a body with a large surface when rubbed would not exercise an action superior in energy to that produced by a small fragment of the same body. From this verification which now seems so simple, but which took so many years to accomplish, we saw emerge the frictional electric machine of our laboratories and the phenomena it produces. The most striking of these were the apparition of sparks and violent discharges which revealed to an astonished world a new force and put into the hands of man a power of which he thought the gods alone possessed the secret.
Electricity was then only produced very laboriously and was considered a very exceptional phenomenon. Now we find it everywhere and know that the simple contact of 2 heterogeneous bodies suffices to generate it. The difficulty now is not how to produce electricity, but how not to give it birth during the production of any phenomenon whatever. The falling of a drop of water, the heating of a gaseous mass by the sun, the raising of the temperature of a twisted wire, and a reaction capable of modifying the nature of a body, are all sources of electricity.”
“if the sun cannot change the temperature of a body without disengaging electricity, if a drop of water cannot fall without producing it, it is evident that its role in the life of all beings must be preponderant. This, in fact, is what we are beginning to admit.”
“M. Berthelot has recently shown the important role of the electric tensions to which plants are constantly subjected.”
“These figures give an idea of the potential which exists either between the upper point of a rod of which the other extremity is earthed, or between the top of a plant of a tree, and the layer of air in which that point or that top is bathed.”
“Given the enormous quantity of energy accumulated within the atoms, it would be enough, if their dissociation were more rapid than it is on cooled globes, to furnish the amount of heat necessary to keep up the incandescence of the stars.”
“Suppose, however, that the dissociation of any substance whatever were only one thousand times more rapid than that of radium, then the quantity of energy emitted would more than suffice to keep it in a state of incandescence.”
“The figures given are considerable, and yet J.J. Thomson, who has recently taken up the question anew, arrives at the conclusion that the energy now concentrated within the atoms is but an insignificant portion of that which they formerly contained and lost by radiation. Independently and at an earlier date, Prof. Filippo Re arrived at the same conclusion.
If, therefore, atoms formerly contained a quantity of energy far exceeding the still formidable amount they now possess, they may, by dissociation, have expended during long accumulations of ages a part of the gigantic reserve of forces piled up within them at the beginning of things. They may have been able, and consequently may still be able, to maintain at a very high temperature stars like the sun and the heavenly bodies. In the course of time, however, the store of intra-atomic energy within the atoms of certain stars has at length been reduced, and their dissociation has become slower and slower. Finally, they have acquired an increasing stability, have dissociated very slowly, and have become such as one observes them today in the shape of cooled stars like the earth and other planets.”
“So that it is not only electricity which is one of its manifestation, but also solar heat, that primary source of life and of the majority of the forces at our disposal. Its study, which reveals to us matter in a totally new aspect, already permits us to throw unforeseen light on the higher mechanics of our universe.”
Seclusão Anagógica 