A Vacuum a Good Conductor.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1863, 14 June 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Vacuum a Good Conductor.

Pw»fesBob EdIjAND has communicaled an important paper to the Royal Academy of Science, Sweden, in which he adduces further proof of his disoovery that a peifeet vacuum is a good conductor of electricity. This result is directly opposed to the current doctrine that ft Tacnum 13 a peifeet insulator. The reason why a Torricellian vaaunm is not trivrersed by an electric current is dut to the fact that there exists ut the points of the electrodes an obstacle to tho discharge of the current, and this obstacle is augmented as the air is rarefied. If the current could be introduced into the vacuum without electrodes, it would bs able to pass through the void without difficulty. Tho conclusion he arrives at from his recent elaborate experiments is that the maximum, attained by tho current intensity ataceitain pressuro of the air when a current traverses a rarefied aii space is not due in any way, as generally assumed, to the resistance between the electrodes by the air having its minimum at that pressure, and af tei ward increasing in amount with the increase of rarefaction, but fco tho iaet that the sum of the electromotive of the spark, and this zesistance then possesses its minimum value. "With tho continuation of the raicf action the resistance of the column of gas diminishes ; but the electromotive force increases. Without employing electrodes at all, M. Edland can by induction easily excite luminous effects in a gas sufficiently rarefied to step the passage of a powerful cunent from electrodes. But this would in his opinion b9 impossible if a highly rarefied gas were an insulator.