Ether (Space); Force and energy; Gravitation; Matter
Faraday arrived at this conclusion and performed certain experiments to
confirm that conclusion, but he was unable to experimentally prove the
truth. It does not follow, however, that because he failed to
experimentally establish the connection, therefore the conclusion is
wrong. In his _Experimental Researches_ he writes, par. 2705, "On the
possible relation of gravity to electricity":--"First of all, a body
which was to be allowed to fall, was surrounded by a helix, and then its
effect in falling sought for." This experiment Faraday states produced
negative results (par. 2706). "A solid cylinder of copper was introduced
into the helix, and carefully fastened to it, and this compound
arrangement was allowed to fall." "The result of this experiment may be
classified as doubtful. It gave very minute, but remarkable indications
of a current in the galvanometer, and the probability of these being
related to gravity appeared the greater, when it was found, in raising
the helix or core, similar indications of contrary currents appeared."
In par. 2717 Faraday thus sums up: "Here end my trials for the present.
The results are negative. They do not shake my strong feeling of the
existence of a relation between gravity and electricity, though they
give no proof that such a relation exists." Here then we have expressed
the strong conviction of the relation that undoubtedly exists between
gravity and electricity by one of the greatest scientists that has ever
lived, and I believe that it is a fact that he was engaged upon
experiments to prove his conviction about the time of his death.
We will now endeavour to trace the action of the Law of Gravitation in
its compound working, in its application to the atomic Aether that fills
all space, and by its gravitating property surrounds all bodies situated
in that space. We are dealing no longer with a frictionless medium,
which is incapable of accepting and transmitting motion of any kind or
sort, but we are now dealing with a medium composed of atoms, which can
give rise to pressures and tensions, or repulsions and attractions from
any one part of space to another.
If we can prove that an atomic Aether can give rise to these pressures
and tensions from one body to another, and those pressures and tensions
harmonize with, and satisfactorily account for, the phenomena sought to
be explained, then we shall have succeeded in making our philosophy
agree with our experience, and such a result as action at a distance
will for ever disappear from the mental conception of all men, as it has
long disappeared from the pages of philosophical and scientific works,
though that disappearance was not accompanied with a satisfactory
solution of the problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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