Chapter XIII: A Boon to Man

Every living thing is dependent upon our activities. It is we electrons who send out heat and light from the sun, and it is we who receive these on their arrival upon this planet. Our action in the matter is really very simple, but until man discovered our existence, he was mystified considerably.

We were amused to hear man say that the atoms of incandescent matter in the sun produced waves in the aether, and that when these aether waves fell upon other atoms on this planet, these were set into a state of vibration, thus producing heat and light. Now if man had only stopped to think, he would have seen how ridiculous it was to speak of atoms of matter producing waves in the aether. He ought to have known that atoms of matter cannot affect the aether, for it offers no resistance to matter moving through it.

Man might have pictured himself riding on the back of this great planet, flying through space at a speed very similar to that of a rifle bullet, and yet even the flimsy blanket of air surrounding the planet is not disturbed by the aether through which it is rushing.

It is true that the atoms of matter play an important part in the origin of heat, but the atoms in the sun could no more affect the atoms on the earth than could a man on the earth push the moon about. It is the very intimate connection between us electrons and the all-pervading aether which enables our fellows in the sun to communicate with those of us upon this planet. Where would man be without us?

_By permission of Siemens Schuckert Werke_

_Berlin_

When a man is encased completely in an over-all made of flexible metallic gauze he is proof against shock due to a discharge of high-tension electricity. The part played by electrons in the case of electric shock is explained in Chapter IV.]

I cannot understand wherein man should find any mystery in connection with this very simple action of ours. You will picture our distant fellow-electrons making very rapid revolutions around the atoms of matter to which they are attached as satellites. Just as the moon circles around the earth, so do we circle around our atoms, but at an enormously greater speed. Of course the whole length of our orbit is inconceivably small, and the speed of our revolutions is inconceivably great. It is our rapid motion through the aether which produces those waves known to man as radiant heat and light. Some one may ask how it is that we electrons can disturb the aether while the giant atoms cannot. The obvious answer is that we are not matter, but electricity; we are not in the same category as atoms of matter.

To complete the picture which I was drawing, you have only to think of the aether waves arriving upon this planet and disturbing sympathetic electrons, causing them to revolve around their atoms in similar fashion to our distant fellows who are producing the aether waves.

It may be that some people get confused between this action and that of those electrons who are shot off bodily from the sun towards the earth. Believe me, there is no connection between the two things. The stream of electrons shot off from the sun is deflected towards the magnetic poles of the earth, and as the electrons enter the upper layers of the atmosphere they produce that beautiful luminous effect which man describes as an _Aurora_.

I have never taken part in one of these great displays, for, as far as my recollection goes, I have never been in the sun, although some fellow-electrons declare that at one time we were all in the same great glowing mass of which the sun, and every member of the solar system, formed a part. However that may be, I certainly have no experience of aurorae, but I have assisted in producing the very same effect upon a small scale within a vacuum tube. The air remaining in these so-called vacuum tubes is just as rarified as the air in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and when we are shot across the tube we act in the same way as those electrons arriving upon this planet from the sun.

You will observe that as a surplus of electrons arrives upon the earth from the sun, the earth is naturally a negatively electrified body, but I need hardly say that the earth does not keep all the electrons which arrive upon it.

My scribe points out that I am wandering from the story which I set out to tell in this chapter, so I shall try and please him.

The direct cause of light, whether it be natural or artificial, is the rapid motion of electrons around atoms of matter. If they revolve at a comparatively slow speed they produce those aether waves which man calls _radiant heat_. If these satellite electrons, however, desire to affect the eye of man, they have to move around at a very much greater speed. If we travel at too fast a speed, then we cease to cause the sensation of light. But, believe me, all the waves we make are of the same nature, no matter what names man has given them. The only difference we can make in the waves is the rate at which they follow one another. Of course we can also make them larger or smaller in height, or, in other words, of greater or less amplitude, but that does not affect their properties.

In the following chapter I shall tell you of some remarkable phenomena which our different aether waves produce in the brain of man.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW WE PRODUCE COLOUR

_THE SCRIBE'S NOTE ON CHAPTER FOURTEEN_

Colour is merely a sensation in the brain.

What the electrons really produce are aether waves, and these
give rise to the sensations of colour.

However, the electrons may claim to produce colour in the same
sense as we savages produce pain in fellow-men by firing
rifle-bullets at them.

The electron explains how some objects appear white, while
others are red, and so forth.

It explains also how electrons produce artificial light.

The electron twits man upon his ridiculously wasteful processes
of obtaining artificial light.