Paracelsus: Philosopher

On the 26th of November, 1493, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (now known as Paracelsus) was born in the little village of Maria-Einsiedeln near Zurich. His father was a physician, his mother the matron of a hospital, and Theophrastus was their only child. After learning the rudiments of medicine, surgery and alchemy from his father, he entered the University of Basle at the age of sixteen. Then he became the pupil of the celebrated Trithemius and later gained some practical experience in alchemy in the laboratory of Sigismund Fugger.

When Paracelsus was twenty years old he set out on his search for “supreme Wisdom,” which took him through every country in Europe and finally led him to Tartary. During those years he made the acquaintance of a great Initiate who instructed him in the secret doctrines of the East. Afterward he went to India, and he may have visited the Mahatmas in Tibet. He returned to Europe in his thirty-second year and became professor of medicine and surgery in the University of Basle, where his fearless condemnation of the medical practices then in vogue aroused the hatred and jealousy of his colleagues. As the result of their persecution Paracelsus resigned his position and again took up a wandering life. Eventually he settled in Salzburg at the invitation of the Prince Palatine, and there he died on the 24th of September, 1541, in his forty-eighth year. The house in which he lived (Linzer Strasse 365, opposite the Church of St. Andrew) may still be seen, and in the graveyard of St. Sebastian will be found a broken pyramid of white marble with a Latin inscription stating that the body of Paracelsus lies beneath. But there is an old tradition that the real Paracelsus did not die at that time, but is still living with other Adepts in a certain spot in Asia, from which place he continues to influence the minds of all who study and promulgate his teachings. A suggestive hint appears in an article published by Mr. Judge in The Path for April, 1887:

Paracelsus was one of the greatest Masters ever known upon the earth. In rank he may be compared with Hermes Thrice-Master. It is considered by some students to be likely that at this period (1887) He who was once known as Paracelsus is in a body whose astral(1) meets with others in Asia.

The enemies of Paracelsus censured him for his nomadic life, which he explained by saying:

“We must seek for knowledge where we may expect to find it. He who wants to study the book of Nature must wander with his feet over the leaves. Every part of the world represents a page in this book, and all the pages together form the Book that contains her great revelations.”

…Paracelsus stressed the underlying Unity of Nature as a whole as well as the inter-relationship and interdependence of all its parts.

“Nature, being the Universe, is ONE, and its origin can only be the one eternal Unity. It is an organism in which all things harmonize and sympathize with each other. It is the Macrocosm. Man is the Microcosm. And the Macrocosm and Microcosm are ONE.” (Philosophia ad Athenienses.)

This unity of man and Nature makes man the focal point through which the three worlds of Nature — the physical, astral and spiritual — manifest themselves. These three “worlds” are made up of a vast quantity of “beings” or “lives.” Some of the “lives” are intelligent, others unintelligent, and it is man’s duty to understand their nature. The ignorant man may be controlled by the lower lives. But the true philosopher has learned how to control them by the power of the Supreme Creator within himself.

Man’s first task, therefore, is to know himself. He must become acquainted with the complexities of his own nature, but, in pursuing this study, he must never for a moment separate himself from Great Nature, of which he is a copy and a part. “Try to understand yourselves in the light of Nature,” he advised his students, “and then all wisdom will come to you.”

….The second principle, called Prana or Jiva in modern Theosophy, is described by Paracelsus as the Archaeus or Liquor Vitae:

De Generatio Hominis

“The whole of the Microcosm is potentially contained in the Liquor Vitae, in which is contained the nature, quality and essence of beings.”

“. . . a man must above all be in possession of that faculty which is called Intuition, and which cannot be acquired by blindly following the footsteps of another. He must be able to see his own way. What others may teach you may assist you in your search for knowledge, but you should be able to think for yourself, and not cling to the coat-tail of any authority, no matter how big-sounding the title of the latter may be.” (De Modo Pharmacandi.)

….The whole purpose of life, according to Paracelsus, is to realize one’s inherent Godhood. There is no God, no saint and no power in which we can place any confidence for the purpose of our salvation, except the power of divine Wisdom within ourselves. Only when man realizes the presence of God within himself will he begin his infinite life, and step from the realm of evanescent illusions into that of permanent truth. This realization can be attained in only one way — by the abandonment of the personal self.

“Only when the illusion of “self” has disappeared from my heart and mind, and my consciousness arisen to that state in which there will be no “I,” then will not I be the doer of works, but the spirit of wisdom will perform its wonders through my instrumentality.” (Philosophia Occulta.)
http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/setting/paracelsusone.html

The Nature Of Space

Lambert Dolphin a retired physicist has some very useful insights into the nature of space which are well worth considering.

” Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) taught that the physical world was made up of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. Tying these all together so that the “elements” intercommunicated was a “subtle” medium, a fifth element: the aether — later to be known as the vacuum. (The Latin root vacuus means “empty”). In a sense the aether was the substratum of the material world. The Greeks believed that “nature abhors a vacuum” so they could not imagine space as being totally empty.
The Greeks believed the stars were suspended from, or attached to, a rotating crystalline shell at a fixed distance from the earth. When some of the “stars” (planets) were observed to be moving with respect to the “fixed” stars, a series of rotating crystal spheres was postulated. The earth was believed to be fixed, immovable, and at the center of the creation. Not until the 16th Century were these Greek (Ptolemaic) ideas challenged by the Copernican revolution. One of the most mysterious concepts in western physics since Aristotle’s day is the concept of the vacuum. Until Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) challenged the notion, the velocity of light was assumed by most everyone to be infinite, so the nature of the space between the earth and the crystal spheres was not of great concern.

Rene Descartes (1596-1640) championed the theory that the aether was a plenum, from the Greek word meaning “full.” Because it was so difficult for the scientists of that era to understand “action at a distance,” Descartes imagined that a very dense medium of very small particles pervaded everything. This medium was capable of transmitting force from one object to another by collisions. The aether “particles” were in constant motion and there were no spaces between the particles. In a sense the aether was more solid than matter, yet invisible. Descartes universe was a purely “mechanical universe” and his theories were soon superseded.

Galileo’s former secretary, Evangelista Torricelli filled a long glass tube with mercury in 1644. Inverting the tube into a dish of mercury he observed that the mercury dropped some 30 inches at the closed upper end of the tube, thereby creating what was obviously a vacuum. Blaise Pascal (1623 -1662) took this work even further and soon everyone was convinced that the vacuum of space was empty after all.

If light were corpuscular in nature as some believed, it was not difficult to imagine that light “particles” (we now call them photons) could traverse a pure vacuum without the necessity of a real medium pervading all of space. But other experiments soon began to show that light was a wave phenomenon. Of course waves could travel through the plenum aether by collisions, however at the time only compressional waves were imagined. [Sound waves or seismic waves are compressional in nature, for instance, but light waves proved to be transverse]. In parallel with all these growing controversies, the velocity of light was finally measured by Olaf Roemer in 1675 and found to be finite, although the values he obtained were a few percent higher than the present value, 299,792.4358 km/sec.

By the time of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) the aether was believed by many scientists to be “luminiferous.” That is, the aether was said to be more fluid than solid, though it was elastic, and therefore it was a medium which would support waves. James Clerk Maxwell (1839 – 1879) enjoyed great success when he found a set of equations which beautifully described how light waves could travel through such a luminiferous aether. He showed that light waves are composed of oscillating electric and magnetic vectors in an x-y plane for a wave traveling in the z-direction. For a waves to exist at all, it is natural to suppose that there is some sort of supporting medium. Such a medium must possess elasticity (a spring like property) and also inertia, (a mass like like property). In fact, the velocity of a wave in any medium is equal to the square root of the stiffness divided by the density of the medium.

In the case of electromagnetic waves (gamma rays, x-rays, radio waves, heat, and light of various wavelengths), Maxwell found that the aether possessed an electric field scaling parameter, called “dielectric permittivity,” and a magnetic field scaling parameter, called permeability, such that the velocity of light was equal to one over the square root of permeability times permittivity. In support of the notion that the aether was a real medium it was observed that empty space behaved like a transmission line with a “characteristic impedance” of 377 ohms, (which is the ratio of permeability to permittivity for “free space.”)

This new theory also explained how light slows down in glass, in gases, in water — because media other than the vacuum had a different permeability and permittivity. The aether was once again thought of as a very real medium which could be stretched or compressed — it had resilience or compliance, and inertia. Yet no known physical substance had a stiffness to mass density ratio anywhere near 9 x 1016 which was required of the aether as a medium. The aether appeared to possess elasticity but negligible inertia
http://ldolphin.org/studynotes/space.htm

An interview with Nikola Tesla

New York Herald Tribune, September 22, 1929

What, then, about power transmission by radio? Laurence M. Cockaday, the technical editor of this radio section, had expressed the opinion several weeks ago that, with present apparatus at least, it was hardly feasible. Mr. Tesla agreed to discuss the point at length. As a result, he made public for the first time one of the most extraordinary conclusions – that Hertz waves do not exist! If his theory is true, there may be found in it more adequate explanations of “dead spots”, fading, reflection and a dozen other problems that have always puzzled the profession.

The inventor began by referring to Cockaday’s article:

“I have read the article, and I quite agree with the opinion expressed – that wireless power transmission is impractical with present apparatus. This conclusion will be naturally reached by any one who recognizes the nature of the agent by which the impulses are transmitted in present wireless practice.

“When Dr. Heinrich Hertz undertook his experiments from 1887 to 1889 his object was to demonstrate a theory postulating a medium filling all space, called the ether, which was structureless, of inconceivable tenuity and yet solid and possessed of rigidity incomparably greater than that of the hardest steel. He obtained certain results and the whole world acclaimed them as an experimental verification of that cherished theory. But in reality what he observed tended to prove just its fallacy.

“I had maintained for many years before that such a medium as supposed could not exist, and that we must rather accept the view that all space is filled with a gaseous substance. On repeating the Hertz experiments with much improved and very powerful apparatus, I satisfied myself that what he had observed was nothing else but effects of longitudinal waves in a gaseous medium, that is to say, waves, propagated by alternate compression and expansion. He had observed waves in the ether much of the nature of sound waves in the air.

“Up to 1896, however, I did not succeed in obtaining a positive experimental proof of the existence of such a medium. But in that year I brought out a new form of vacuum tube capable of being charged to any desired potential, and operated it with effective pressures of about 4,000,000 volts. I produced cathodic and other rays of transcending intensity. The effects, according to my view, were due to minute particles of matter carrying enormous electrical charges, which, for want of a better name, I designated as matter not further decomposable. Subsequently those particles were called electrons.

“One of the first striking observations made with my tubes was that a purplish glow for several feet around the end of the tube was formed, and I readily ascertained that it was due to the escape of the charges of the particles as soon as they passed out into the air; for it was only in a nearly perfect vacuum that these charges could be confined to them. The coronal discharge proved that there must be a medium besides air in the space, composed of particles immeasurably smaller than those of air, as otherwise such a discharge would not be possible. On further investigation I found that this gas was so light that a volume equal to that of the earth would weigh only about one-twentieth of a pound.

“The velocity of any sound wave depends on a certain ratio between elasticity and density, and for this ether or universal gas the ratio is 800,000,000,000 times greater than for air. This means that the velocity of the sound waves propagated through the ether is about 300,000 times greater than that of the sound waves in air, which travel at approximately 1,085 feet a second. Consequently the speed in ether is 900,000 x 1,085 feet, or 186,000 miles, and that is the speed of light.

“As the waves of this kind are all the more penetrative the shorter they are, I have for years urged the wireless experts to use such waves in order to get good results, but it took a long time before they settled upon this practice.

“Although the world is still skeptical as to the feasibility of my undertaking, I note that some advanced experts, at least, share my views, and I hope that before long wireless power transmission will be as common as transmission by wires.”

According to Mr. Tesla, the present broadcasting station does not propagate Hertzian waves, as has always been supposed, but acts more like an “ether whistle” – transmitting waves through the ether similar to the waves transmitted by an ordinary whistle through the air. He also expressed his disbelief in the Heaviside layer, and claimed that the reflection of waves back toward the earth was due to the change of medium encountered at the vacuous boundary of the atmosphere.

At Colorado Springs, about thirty years ago, this scientist had a Tesla coil seventy-five feet in diameter which produced voltages above 12,000,000, and sparks over 100 feet long. Electrical flashes were created which were the nearest approach to lightning that man has ever made. During his experiments there, of over a year, Tesla claims that he transmitted a considerable amount of electrical current to the other side of the earth. It was upon these, and later experiments that he bases his present prediction.
http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1929-09-22.htm

The Problem With My Theory

Millions of people all over the world are being fooled by the non-existing electrons.

Here is how the electrons came into existence. Thomson invented an imaginary baby and called it an electron.

Rutherford adopted it and now the men with the long hair are nursing it.
~~Edward Leedskalnin

If you’ve ever read Leedskalnin’s book “Magnetic Current”, you’ll know that he was non-too-impressed with modern science’s portrayal of the electron. The electron is said to be a tiny particle that whizzes around a massive nucleus, made up by protons and neutrons. The neutron has the same mass as a proton BUT has no charge. The electron has a negative charge that effectively cancels the opposing positive charge of the proton to produce a neutral atom.

Following the pioneering experiments that took place with discharge tubes in the 19th Century, it has been supposed that electricity is the flow of electrons, or rather, wiggling electrons that do not move, but allow “current” to pass through. I suspected that this electric current had something to do with the fluid aether, so I set-about trying to design a new model for the atom that was based in aether theory.

In the previous post, Dr.Paul Rowe was illustrating his theory that hydrogen could be produced in a vacuum, and he does so in the unconventional, but most charming, form of a play, “The Fall and Rise of the House Of Cards.” Rowe had personally experienced the appearance of hydrogen following experiments where he detonated explosives containing aluminum flake in vacuum. Intrigued by the presence of hydrogen, Rowe began to investigate other experiments where hydrogen was procured from a vacuum. It became more apparent that the early pioneering experimenters were also aware of the puzzling appearance of hydrogen, under certain conditions, in an extreme vacuum. The conclusion that Rowe comes to is that a vacuum is not a void, but a “concentrated matrix of protons and electrons”. The matrix to which Rowe refers is better known, in some circles, as the luminiferous aether.

I at first thought I might be able to give something of my own ideas to Rowe’s theory, but instead, it has shown me that there is a problem with my model of the atom (at least it now gives me an opportunity to develop a much better one!) The problem with my theory arises because I have designed the electron as a structure in the aether. I had concieved the proton and electron as dipolar vortices in the aether, so that I could go on to construct an atom that looked like a vortex ring – a donutom (I figured that the neutron would later emerge as being part of the mass that made up a donutom.)

I imagined electricity, not as a flow of electrons, but as a flow in the aether – similar to the wind that flows between high and low weather systems. Indeed, I thought of the electron as a cyclone which sucked up the aether and it was this force that was somehow generating negative electricity. Positive electricity would be a force generated by the proton as it blows out the aether. To me, electricity was not so much a flow of electrons, but a flow of aether energy through a chain of protons and/or electrons. Though electricity was a seperate entity to protons and electrons – it was inextricably linked to them. This makes sense when you think of electricity flowing through conductors, but what of the electricity that passes through a vacuum? It would mean that negative electricity in a vacuum must be involved with electrons. In many ways, the electricity which I tried to concieve from the aether, shares the same inhibition as mainstream theory – in that electricity is a fundamental property of matter.

Theoretically, dipolar vortices can be created in the aether fluid by “something” that was able to move very, very fast – and if I understand fluid dynamics correctly – it would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. That “something” is electricity. If the proton and electron are created AFTER the passing of electricity – that means electricity was present BEFORE the creation of the dipolar vortices. This is important because it highlights a problem with my theory, in that electricity can exist independently of matter. If the electricity is not made up of electrons torn off the electrode, then it becomes more obvious that electricity, and more specifically the electron, is strictly a property of the aether.

Rowe’s investigations were heavily centred on hydrogen arising from the fluid aether in an extreme vacuum. The electron, which in my hypothesis should also be present, perhaps in the form of helium, is conspicuous in its absence.

I’m missing something. Somewhere I’ve misunderstood something. I’m still convinced that the atom looks something like a donutom, but not quite the way that I have so far envisioned. I don’t think the electron exists as a vortex in the aether – that’s if the electron even exists at all. It’s time to don my top-hat and return to the 19th Century, to take another look at those early experiments with electrical discharges in vacuum tubes, and to finally understand why they gave birth to the electron.

A copy of Leedskalnin’s book “Magnetic Current” is available here:
http://www.linux-host.org/energy/leed3.htm

You can read Rowe’s play, “The Fall and Rise of the House Of Cards” thanks to a post on Sepp Hasslberger’s blog:
http://blog.hasslberger.com/2006/06/hydrogen_from_space_the_aether.html

Hydrogen From Space

Image: House of cards by Alex Clark

The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
~~Goethe’s Faust

Recently, I came across a post on Sepp Hasselberger’s blog that I had first seen more than a year ago. In the post, Sepp gives details about some of the ideas of Dr.Paul Rowe, regarding the aether, and specifically, Rowe’s persistence that it could be possible to produce hydrogen from the vacuum of space. This belief is based on his own experience and also past experiments made by pioneering scientists of the 19th Century.

Rowe manages to explain his theory about the aether while also imagining himself as part of an elaborate stage play (where he is taunted by the ghosts of science-past – including Huygens, Maxwell and Einstein – about his snoring, and belief in the existence of the aether). In the play, Rowe makes the very curious statement that “vacuum is not a void and whatever is in vacuum can be converted into hydrogen under surprisingly mild conditions.”

I wrote a post in March last year, “House of Cards”, which was based on details taken from Rowe’s play (the title of the post is taken from the name of the play.) I found the play very interesting, highly entertaining, and it even succeeded in tickling me in places (no easy feat in the midst of discussing physics.) After reading it again last night, I realised just how much the play has influenced my thinking over the past year. For one, it showed me the need to question everything that science bases its assumptions on, and to try and explain my line of reasoning as simply as possible. More importantly perhaps, Rowe also proved to me that you can do all the scientific stuff, without having to take ourselves too seriously.

Most certainly, it was Rowe who drew my attention to the paradox that Maxwell had developed his calculations for EMR whilst using a mechanical model of the aether (he later discarded the model but kept the maths.) It follows that Einstein then used Maxwell’s equations to develop his own theories, but as Rowe points out, wasn’t he thereby basing them on the same assumptions – mainly, that a vacuum is a physical medium? In one dream sequence, Rowe challenges Einstein’s stance on the existence of the aether:

” I’ve heard that you felt your equations described physical phenomena without assuming a physical medium in vacuum. You have been quoted as saying, “If a thing can’t be observed, why should it be necessary to assume its existence?””

One could argue that Einstein did not so much as deny the existence of the aether, but rather, he argued that to prove its existence was unnecessary. There was something else in the play which caught my eye. I noticed that it might very well have been here that I first picked up on the old “helium-He-God” thing. Below, is a part of the play, where Rowe is talking to J. Norman Collie, a long-since deceased Fellow of the Royal Society, about helium’s possible contention as being the very substance of the Universe, and ultimately, God:

” For a while, I thought that the medium (aether), in which many scientists, of your day still believed carried light, might be helium. This would mean the whole knowable universe is permeated with helium. It pleased me to think that the most important thing in the universe was capital H small e, which in this form is the pronoun we use for God.”

I think that the timing of me re-discovering Sepp’s post, and essentially Rowe’s aether theory, is for me personally significant. For over the past year I have been able to learn a few more things regarding aether theory, and today, at last, I am beginning to grasp the importance of what Rowe is saying. If I might be so bold, having developed some of my own ideas on the aether over the past year, I think that I might be able to add something to the picture being painted by Rowe. Below, is a paragraph, written by Rowe, which seems to encapsulate the most radical idea in his aether theory:

” I am convinced that hydrogen gas has been created from vacuum. This leads me to suspect that vacuum contains something from which hydrogen can be produced. Other observations led me to suspect that vacuum contains a concentrated matrix of protons and electrons. Such a matrix, the aether, agrees with the ideas of Huygens and Maxwell on the nature of light. The presence of unpaired electrons in the matrix permits simple explanations for the forces between magnets separated by vacuum.”
http://blog.hasslberger.com/2006/06/hydrogen_from_space_the_aether.html

Rowe suspects that the vacuum of space is a concentrated matrix of protons and electrons, and as these are the basic ingredients which make-up helium, it could be argued that the aether is one guise or another of helium. The fourth state of matter – plasma – is essentially made up of super-heated helium. If we imagine the aether as a highly concentrated fluid, then it shall be seen that protons and electrons simply arise from it; they don’t exist as protons and electrons per se, until they are fashioned from the formless aether fluid. From this, one might be tempted to draw the conclusion that plasma can arise, by some mechanism, from the fluid of the aether, and that when it does, we are essentially witnessing the birth of matter. Not only that, but we are seeing it emerge from a place that science has erroneously described as empty. The aether, the cold vacuum of space that we’ve largely ignored as merely “nothing”, suddenly becomes a sea of seemingly endless potential energy.

The structure of the building blocks of matter is remarkably simple – they are swirling dipolar vortices in the fluid of the aether. The proton is anticyclonic while the electron is cyclonic, and though they vary in mass, I have presumed that these particles are roughly the same size. The proton has a mass that is some 1836 times greater than the electron, and I think that the reason for this greatly increased mass is down to density. Thus, the proton emerges as a very dense structure in the aether. While on the other hand, the electron being cyclonic, suggests that it is an “empty” structure, and that it has a density that is 1836 times lower than that of the proton. The electron emerges as something of a “hole” in the aether field.

I was thinking that if a proton is a structure that has too much fluid, and the electron is one that has too little, then if I was looking for the very essence of the aether, I should make like Goldilocks and go for something, somewhere in the middle. Therefore, what we are looking for is an entity that has half the density of a proton, while also being half as dense as the electron; something that is 918 times less dense than a proton, but 918 times more dense than an electron. If a proton has a positive charge, and therefore a positive mass, while an electron has a negative charge, and a negative mass, then what is required is something that has no charge, and no mass.

No charge and no mass? Where on earth can we ever hope to find something that has no charge and no mass? No chance. We might aswell close the book on that one. Time to wrap it up. Last one to leave turn off the light. But hang on, some time ago, there was a particle of the aether which was thought to exist that possessed practically no charge, and virtually no mass – Tesla called it a “neutron”, Leedskalnin referred to them as “North and South pole indivual magnets”, while Mendeleev named it “element x”.

In October 1902, the Russian chemist, Professor D. Mendeleev, produced a thesis entitled, “An Attempt Towards A Chemical Conception Of The Ether.” In an attempt at a chemical conception of the aether, he put forward a hypothesis that there existed two inert chemical elements of lesser atomic weight than hydrogen. The heavier of these he called coronium, while the lighter one, the one which he suspected could belong to the substance of the aether itself, he classed as a “zero series besides a zero group” on the Periodic Table, and named it “element x”. Below, I’ve included the extracts from the thesis which seemed the most relevant to this discussion:

” In his Dictionaire Complet, P. Larousse defines the ether as ‘an imponderable elastic fluid, filling space and forming the source of light, heat, electricity, etc.’ This is laconic, but sufficient to raise some misgivings in the mind of a thoughtful man of science. He is obliged to admit, in the ether, the properties of a substance (fluid), while at the same time, in order to explain in some way the transmission of energy through space by its motion, the ether is assumed to be an all-pervading ‘medium’. Moreover, in order to explain the phenomena of light, electricity, and even gravity, this medium is supposed to undergo various disturbances (perturbations) and changes in its structure (deformation), like those observed in solids, liquids and gases. If the fluid medium permeates everything and everywhere, it cannot be said to have weight, just as the ponderability of air could not be recognized before the invention of the air pump. Yet the ether must have weight, because, since the days of Galileo and Newton, the quality of gravitation or of weight forms a primary property of substances.

Before endeavoring to give an answer respecting the chemical nature of ether, I think it necessary to state my opinion regarding the belief held by some in the unity of the substance of the chemical elements and their origin from one primary form of matter. According to this view, ether consists of this primary matter in an unassociated form, that is, not in the form of the elementary atoms or molecules of substances, but as the constituent principle out of which the chemical atoms are formed. This view has much that is attractive. The atoms are regarded as proceeding from primary matter in the same way as celestial bodies are sometimes represented as being formed from disunited bodies, such as cosmic dust, etc. The celestial bodies so formed remain surrounded by the cosmic dust, etc., from which they took their origin. So also the atoms remain in the midst of the all-pervading and primary ether from which they took their origin. Some persons assume also that atoms can be split up into their dust or primary matter, just as comets break up into falling stars; and that, as the geological changes of the earth or the building up and dissociation of heavenly bodies proceed before our eyes, so also do the atoms break up and form again in the silence of their eternal evolution

Hence the ether may be said to be a gas, like helium or argon, incapable of chemical combination. This definition of the ether as a gas, signifies that it belongs to the category of the ordinary physical states of matter, gaseous, liquid or solid. It does not require the recognition of a peculiar fourth state beyond the human understanding (Crookes). All mystical, spiritual ideas about ether disappear. In calling ether a gas, we understand a ‘fluid’ in the widest sense; an elastic fluid having no cohesion between its parts. Furthermore, if ether be a gas, it has weight; this is undisputable, unless the whole essence of natural science, from the days of Galileo, Newton, and Lavoisier, be discarded for its sake. But since ether possesses so great a penetrative power that it passes through every envelope, it is, of course, impossible to experimentally determine its mass in a given amount o other substances, or the weight of a given volume of ether. We ought, therefore, not to speak of the imponderability of ether, but only of the impossibility of weighing it.

The problem of the ether is more or less closely connected with that of gravity, and gains in simplicity when all question of the chemical attraction of the atoms of ether is excluded, and this is accomplished by placing it in the zero group. But if the series of elements begins with series I containing hydrogen, the zero group has no place for an element lighter than y, like ether. I therefore add a zero series, besides a zero group, to the periodic system, and place the element x in this zero series, regarding it (1) as the lightest of all the elements both in density and atomic weight; (2) as the most mobile gas; (3) as the element least prone to enter into combination with other atoms, and (4) as an all-permeating and penetrating substance.

In a word, I see no object in following the doctrine of unity of matter, while I clearly see the necessity of recognizing the unity of the substance of ether and of realizing a conception of it, as the uttermost limit of that process by which all the other atoms of the elements were formed and by which all substances were formed from these atoms. To me this kind of unity is far more real than any conception of the formation of the elements from a single primary matter. Neither gravity nor any of the problems of energy can be rightly understood without a real conception of the ether as a universal medium transmitting energy at a distance. Moreover, a real conception of ether cannot be obtained without recognizing its chemical nature as an elementary substance, and in these days no elementary substance is conceivable which is not subject to the periodic law.

As regards the temperature of space, this can only be regarded as the absolute zero by those who deny the material nature of the ether, for temperature in a perfect vacuum or I space devoid of matter is an absurdity, and a solid such as an aerolite or thermometer introduced into such space would alter the temperature, not by contact with the surrounding medium, but solely by radiation. But if space be filled with the substance of ether, it not only may have, but must, have its own temperature, which evidently cannot be absolute zero.

Hence, according to Formula II, the atomic weight of such a gas must be less than 0.038 to enable it to escape freely from the earth’s atmosphere into space. All gases of greater atomic weight, not only hydrogen and helium, but even the gas y (coronium?), will remain in the earth’s atmosphere.

…I consider that the majority of phenomena are sufficiently explained by the fact that the particles and atoms of the lightest element x capable of moving freely everywhere throughout the universe have an atomic weight nearly one millionth that of hydrogen, and travel with a velocity of about 2,250 kilometers/second.

In conceiving the ether as a gas endowed with the above properties, and belonging to the zero group of elements, I desired before all to extract from the periodic law that which it was able to give and to tangibly explain the materiality and universal presence of an ethereal substance throughout nature, and also to explain its faculty of permeating all substances, gaseous, liquid and solid. The atoms of even the lighter elements forming the ordinary substances being several million times heavier than those of ether, they are not likely to be greatly influenced in their mutual relations by its presence.

It seems to me that the optical and photo-radiant phenomena, not to mention the loss of electrical charges, indicate a material flow of something which has not been weighed, and it appears to me that they might be understood in this manner, for peculiar forms of the entrance and egress of ether atoms should be accompanied by such disturbances in the ethereal medium as give the phenomena of light. Monsieur and Madame Curie showed me the following experiment, for instance. Two small flasks were connected together by a lateral tube fused into their necks, and having a stopcock in the middle. The cock being closed, a solution of the radioactive substance was poured into one of the flasks, while the gelatinous white precipitate of sulfide of zinc, shaken up in water, was placed in the other flask. Then both flasks were closed. So long as the cock between the flasks remained closed, nothing is visible in the dark; but directly as it is opened, the sulfide of zinc becomes brilliantly fluorescent and continues so as long as the tube connecting the flasks remains open. This experiment gives the impression of an emissive flow of something material from the radioactive substance, and, in a sense, seems comprehensible if we assume that a peculiar refined ether gas, capable of exciting luminous vibrations, enters and passes off from the radioactive substance.

In conclusion, I may mention another class of phenomena, which led me to this conception of the ether. Dewar, about 1894, in his researches on the phenomena proceeding at low temperatures, observed that the phosphorescence of many substances, and especially of paraffin, becomes more intense at the temperature of liquid air (between -181° and -193°). Now, it appears to me that this is due to the fact that paraffin and such like substances have a great capacity for condensing the atoms of ether at very low temperatures. In other words, that the solubility (absorption) of the ether atoms in some bodies increases in extreme cold. They therefore become more phosphorescent, for the vibrations of light are then set up in the phosphorescent substances, not only by their own atoms (having the property of illumination at their surface, of passing into a state of peculiar tension, which causes, when the act of illumination ceases, the ether to vibrate), but also by the atoms of ether which condense in these bodies and set up a rapid state of interchange with the surrounding medium.
http://www.rexresearch.com/ether/mendelev.htm

I find that what Mendeleev is revealing about the nature of the aether to be absolutely fascinating. He imagines the aether to be neither a solid or a liquid, or indeed, neither etherial or imponderable – but simply a gas. Best of all, he gives us a pretty good description of the particles that make up this gas. Mendeleev describes element x as having “an atomic weight nearly one millionth that of hydrogen,” and that it travels “with a velocity of about 2,250 km/s.” Based on Mendeleev’s calculations, if element x should have a mass which was even smaller, it would be capable of higher velocities, thereby making it remarkably similar to a particle, which today, we call the “neutrino”.

Neutrinos, meaning “small neutral one”; are elementary particles that often travel close to the speed of light, are electrically neutral, and are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a minuscule, but nonzero mass. They are denoted by the Greek letter ν (nu).

Most neutrinos passing through the Earth emanate from the Sun, and more than 50 trillion solar neutrinos pass through the human body every second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

Where might it be possible to find a reliable mechanism to produce hydrogen from the aether? I was thinking that it should be possible to produce not only protons, but also electrons. Fluid dynamics dictates that it is simplicity itself to produce vortices in a fluid, especially one as theoretically perfect as the aether. Protons and electrons being the basic building blocks of matter, are most conspicuous in plasma. The most obvious form of plasma being lightning, and as we see it so readily here on Earth, one might presume that the mechanism should be easy to duplicate. Rowe, in a final conversation with Einstein at the close of the play, also reveals an interest in the mechanism that produces lightning:

Paul: You probably know that there is great concern today about the depletion of the earth’s fuels and the deleterious side effects from our present sources of energy. All of the techniques I have discussed for converting the medium into hydrogen require the input of large amounts of energy to produce comparatively little hydrogen. Conversion of the hydrogen in water into the medium, would release considerable energy. The byproducts would be oxygen and the medium. If one could control the process, there would be no deleterious effects.

Einstein: Have you tried to accomplish this?

Paul: Yes, and I have had some interesting, but not dramatic results. I haven’t been able to convince myself about the source of the energy. I certainly couldn’t convince the scientific community. The source of the energy from lightning remains a mystery. I wonder if it could be the conversion of hydrogen in moist air into the medium.

Einstein: That is just the kind of thing I had in mind…

Many thanks:

http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/worldaroundus/may_neon.html
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/iso010.html
http://lipscomb.hitunic.com/1111.htm
http://www.halleethehomemaker.com/2009/11/creation-stellar-part-i/
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01452a015
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/isotopes/s_ne_2.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00319.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/nuclear-fusion-in-stars.html
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/HIST/awards/OPA%20Papers/2005-Kaji.pdf
http://www.cellularuniverse.org/AA1Aether&Cosmology.htm
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/patterns.htm
http://www.wbabin.net/physics/stoinov2.pdf.
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aether_0.html
http://www.secrets-of-the-aether.com/joomla/ontologicalfoundation/62-einsteinsaether.html
http://www.aetherpress.com/physics.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev
http://laserstars.org/spectra/Coronium.html
http://www.mreclipse.com/Totality2/TotalityApH.html http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/neutrino.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi