POWER FROM THE SUN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 211, 11 October 1909, Page 4

POWER FROM THE SUN.

THE WORLD'S FUTURE ENERGY. WHEN COAL GIVES OUT. ADDRESS RY SIR .1. .1. THOMSON. The meetings of the British Association opened in Winnipeg on 25th August, Professor Sir .). .1. Thomson making the inaugural address. In addition to « large number of British members of the association, many American scientists were present. Tile following summary of the address is given bv the London Dailv News: Professor Sir J. J. Thomson said lie claimed to have some experience of ono branch of Canadian science, for it had been his privilege to receive at the Cavendish. Laboratory many students from Canadian Universities, some of them holders of the 1851 scholarships. There was no educational endowment in Ihe country which had done or was doing better work. EXCESSIVE SCHOLARSHIP COMPETITION.

"1 have had." lie said, "upliorluuiticJ ijf cumparing the effect on the best men of the ixlucutioniil system in force a I your uiiivciiitiL'S with that which pro vails in the older English universiti \s. Well, as a result, I have come to the conclusion that there is a good deal in the latter system which you have been wise not til imitate. The chief evil from which we at Cambridge Miller, and which you have avoided, is, 1 am convinced, (iie excessive competition for scholarships. The colleges in the Vnivcrsity of Cambridge alone give more than OHMW a year in scholarships to undergraduates, uuil I suppose the ease is much the same at Oxford. The result of this is that preparation for these scholarships dominates the education of the great majority of the cleverest boye. "ft 100 often means that about two years before (he examination the boy begins to specialise, and from the age »f sixteen does little else than the subject for which he wishes to get a scholarship. Tile effect of studying one subject, anil one subject only, for so long a time is too often to dull his enthusiasm for 11, and lie begins research with much of his early interest and keenness evaporated. Xow, there is hardly any | i]uality more essential to success in research tluin enthusiasm."

The specialisation prevalent in school often prevented students of science from acquiring sufficient knowledge of mathematics. Two points of view were better limn ono, and the physicist who was also 1 11 mathematician possessed a most | powerful instrument for scientific research with which many of the greatest discoveries had been made. He had also at his command a language clear, concise, and universal, and there was no better way of detecting ambiguities and discrepancies in his ideas than by trying to express them in this language. Indeed, it would seem tliil the most fruitful crop of scientific i-.1-.-si : was produced by cross-fertilisation between the mind anil some definite fact, and that the mind by itself was comparatively unproductive. Host of us had to tackle some definite difficulty before our minds developed whatever powers they might possess, 'this was true for even the youngest, for schoolboys and schoolgirls, and the moral to be'drawn from it was that we should aim at making the education n our schools as little 'bookish and as practical and concrete as possible. It was possible (o read books, to pass examinations, without the higher qualities of the mind being called into play. But it was not possible fo r a boy to make a boat or for a girl to cook a' dinner without using brains.

KXCITAXdrc OP STUDENTS. •'I should like to see," continued Sir ■T. .T. Thomson, "a considerable interchange of students between the universities in the Mother Country ami those in the colonies. I can think of nothing more likely to lead to a better understanding of the feelings, sympathies, and, what is not less important, the .prejudices of one country by another, than by Hie youth of those conntries spending a part of their student life together. Undergraduates, as a rule, do not wear a mask, either of po litenesr, or any other material, and ha.-e pvobably a bettor Icnowledge of each other's'opinions and points of view—ii. fact, know each other better than do people of riper age. 'To. bring this communion of students about there must be cooperation between the universities throughout the Empire; there must be recognition of each other's examinations, residence, and degrees." After discussing at some length (he nature of positive and negative units of electricity, the president continued:— "A knowledge of the mass and sizs of the two units of electricity, the positive and the negative, would give us the material for constructing what may hi called a molecular theory of electricity, and would be a starting-point fur a theory of the structure of matter; tor the most natural view to lake, as a provisional hypothesis, is that the matter

is just a collection of positive and negative units of electricity, and that the forces which hold atoms and molecules together, the properties which differentiate one kind of matter from another, all have their origin in the electrical forces exerted !by positive and negative units of electricity grouped together in different ways in the atoms of the different elements.

WORLD'S MASTER WORKER. , "Trip matter of which I have been speaking so far is the material which builds u)i the earth, the sun, and tfu stars, the matter studied by the chemist, and which lie can represent by a formula. This matter occupies, howev:r, hut an insignificant fraction of the universe; it forms but minute islands in the great ocean of the ether, the suDsiauce with which the whole universe is filled.

"The ether is not a fantastic creation of the speculative philosopher; it is as essential to us as the air we breathe. For we must remember that we on this earth are not living on our own resources; wc are dependent from minute to minute upon what we are getting from the sun, and the gifts of the sun are conveyed to us by the ether. It is to the siin that wc owe not merely night and day. springtime and harvest, but it is the energy of the sun stored up in coal, waterfalls, in food, that practically docs all the work of the world. "Ilov great is the supply the sun lavishes upon us becomes clear when w,consider that the heat received under a high sun and a clear sky is equivalent, according to the measurements of Langley, to about 7000 horse-power per acre. Though our engineers have not yet discovered how to utilise this enormous supply of power, they will, I have not the slightest doubt, ultimately succeed in doing so. and when coal is exhausted and our water-power inadequate, it may he that this is the source from which we shall derive the energy necessary for the world's work. When that comes about our centres of industrial activity may perhaps be transferred to the burning deserts-of the Sahara, and the valie of land determined by its suitability for the reception of traps to' catch sunbeams.

"This energy, in the interval between its departure from the sun and its arrival at the earth, must be in the space between them. Thus this space must contain something which, like ordinary matter, can store up energy, which caa carry it an enormous pace'the energy, associated with light and heat, and which can, in addition, exert the enormous stresses necessary to keep the earth circling round the sun and the moon round the earth.

"On the electro-magnetic theory of light, now universally accepted, the energy streaming to the earth travels througli the ether in electric waves. Thus practically the whole of the energy at our disposal has at one time or other been electrical energy. The ether must, then, be the seat of electrical and magnetic forces." A RENAISSANCE IN PHYSICS.

After referring to the medical properties of radium, now being investigated, Professor Sir .f. J. Thomson concluded' his address as follows:

"The new' discoveries made in physics in the last few years, and 'the ideas and DOli-iithilitifrt suggested by them, hairo had an effect upon the workers in that subject akin to that produced in literature by the Renaissance.' Enthusiasm has been quickened, and there is a hopeful, youthful, perhaps exuberant, spirit abroad which leads men to make with confidence experiments which would have been thought fantastic twenty years ago. It has quite dispelled the pes« mistic feeling, not uncommon at that time, that all the interesting things had hern discovered, and nil that wis left wa- to alter a decimal or two 'n some physical constant. "There never was any justification for this feeling, there never were any signs of an approach to finality in science. The sum of knowledge is at present, at any rate, a diverging, not a converging scries. As we conquer peak after peak we see ill front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not s.'e our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the dislance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend I hem still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, whose truth is emphasised by every advance in science, that 'Grcit are the works of the Lord.'"