1. Before 1940 a very remarkable simplification will be made in atomic theory, which will indicate that in quantum processes physics has ‘touched bottom’ and that--for the time being--we may consider that nature is not infinitely complex within the heart of the atom. The proof of this apparent if not absolute limit to the micro-structure of nature will take the form of the discovery of simple relationships between the fundamental constants of atomic structure, e, m, M, c, and h. (The electronic charge and mass, the mass of the hydrogen nucleus, the velocity of light, and Planck’s constant.) Such relations are already known but are considered to be of no significance since they are ruled out by the accepted theory of electrical dimensions. Yet this dimensional system is not based on direct observation, and the importance of these relationships will soon be recognized in consequence of experiments aimed at a direct determination of an ‘electron velocity’, in a curved track. ‘Electron velocity’ as calculated from deflection experiments will be found not to be the same as the directly measurable cms. per sec., and in the case of straight electron tracks, the measured velocity may be found to be always that of light, though this does not mean much since the velocity of light in one direction has never been measured. As the result of the study of individual radiation tracks, for instance in the reflection of electrons by crystals, and particularly of any _time_ measurements that can be made, a new system of physical conceptions will be built up appropriate to irreversible processes, which will be substituted for the Newtonian reversible system. The new scheme will probably be based on the conception of the atom, with its radiating electron tracks, as a natural clock which not only can be used to measure out equal time intervals, but also to yield an objective criterion of past and future. In order to make this idea, or at least one part of it, capable of empirical test the following hypothesis is put forward: The time-interval between any two point-events on any electron track is a simple function of the length and curvature of the part of the track between the two points. This hypothesis contradicts the current interpretation of electron theory on a point which has never yet been subjected to experimental test. The conceptions which will be built up on electron velocity experiments will very quickly bring within one simple theory the facts of chemical combination and colloidal processes. For these depend upon irreversible effects connected with radiation and electrons, and will therefore be amenable to treatment by the new conceptions for the very reason which necessarily puts them beyond the scope of Newtonian laws.