The Source of Radium Energy

THE novel and unforeseen property of radium of producing energy, which purely kinetic theories, in opposition to the notion of inherent force as a transcendental element, do not seem able to explain, is perhaps destined to give a fresh impetus to discussion from the two distinct points of view. It is meanwhile to be noted with regard to this, that the notion of force acting at a distance from point to point, being equal and reciprocal between the various material points, does not appear to be any better met by the manifestation of the unfailing energy of radium than the simple movements of the kinetic theory. This remark justifies attention being directed to a view of the natural physical forces presented by the present writer more than ten years ago (see Lagrange's "Study of the System of Physical Forces," forming vol. xlviii. of the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium). It is there shown that forces exist of such a nature that static equilibrium is impossible, on the impact of bodies of different composition, at their surfaces of contact. They are forces making a body, after the example of radium, emit rays unceasingly without apparent loss of substance. A force of repulsion is referred to here, emanating from the surface, and not from the centre of the mass of atoms, acting on opposed surfaces, and the varying intensity of which is nothing else than what is known to science as absolute temperature. That repulsive force, acting in the inverse ratio of the volume of matter (or of the cube of the distance), just as Newtonian gravitation acts in the inverse ratio of the surface (or as the square of the distance), takes its immediate development, and to some extent visible shape, in Mariotte's law of the relation of pressure to volume in gases. The memoir establishes the existence of a continuous interatomic medium of transcendental qualities not yet understood, conveying the effect of a force acting at the surface of atoms, and the real seat of luminous and electromagnetic wave motion, according to the views to which clearly Lord Kelvin has of late returned. The view now presented is entirely deduced from analysis of the actual facts, worked out at length, and justified by the memoir, and new so far as the case of the impossibility of an equilibrium due to the surface force of repulsion, which gives rise to an exhaustless emission of energy. The reflecting attention of physicists may therefore be legitimately directed to the subject, because