Roentgen Rays are Material

So Says Nikola Tesla After an Investigation That Confirms His Long Standing Belief.

THE MATTER CAN BE FELT.

Particles Bombard the Tube and Act as Inelastic Bodies Similar to Small Lead Bullets.

MOVE AT GREAT VELOCITY.

The Roentgen rays — the wonderful X rays, as commonly called — which have astonished the world by bringing light out of dark places, even illuminating the human body, are now declared to be material particles by no less an authority than Nikola Tesla.

Mr. Tesla has been led to take this view for some time from the results of experiments which he has been conducting in his laboratory, as told by the HERALD after an interview with him. But now he comes forward without hesitation and says that the electrical conditions within the tube from which the rays issue produce absolute particles. They are material as cannon balls; infinitesimal and attenuated, it is true, but actual material which bombard the glass and any object which may come in line with their motion. And this motion is no insignificant thing, and would make the most rapid moving cannon ball appear to stand still, for Mr. Tesla says his experiments show them to move at a velocity of not less than sixty-two miles a second. In the measurements he uses he calls it “100 kilometres a second.”

Mr. Tesla further says he can feel the effects of these particles striking against his eye, and has noted the sensation produced when they come in contact with his brain.

MR. TESLA’S DECLARATION.

Mr. Tesla makes public his conclusions in relation to the Roentgen rays in a letter to the Electrical Review of this week, in which — after referring to Professor Roentgen’s theory that the rays were longitudinal waves of ether — he says: —

“After a long and careful investigation with apparatus excellently suited for the purpose, capable of producing impressions at great distances, and after examining the results pointed out by other experimenters, I have come to the conclusion, which I now find courage to pronounce without hesitation, that the original hypothesis of Roentgen will be confirmed in two particulars — first, in regard to the longitudinal character of the disturbances; second, in regard to the medium concerned in their propagation.

“There is but little doubt at present that a cathodic stream within a bulb is composed of small particles of matter, thrown off with great velocity from the electrode. The velocity probably attained is estimable, and fully accountable for the mechanical and heating effects produced by the impact against the wall or obstacle within the bulb. It is, furthermore, an accepted view that the projected lumps of matter act as inelastic bodies, similarly to ever so many small lead bullets. It can be easily shown that the velocity of the stream may be as much as one hundred kilometres a second, or even more.

SHATTERED INTO FRAGMENTS.

“But, now, matter moving with such great velocity must surely penetrate great thicknesses of the obstruction in its path, if the laws of mechanical impact are at all applicable to a cathodic stream. I have presently so much familiarized myself with this view that, if I had no experimental evidence, I would not question the fact that some matter is projected through the thin wall of a vacuum tube. The exit from the latter is, however, the more likely to occur, as the lumps of matter must be shattered into still much smaller particles by the impact.

“From my experiments it appears that the lumps or molecules are indeed shattered into fragments or constituents so small as to make them lose entirely some physical properties possessed before the impact.

MATTER TURNED TO ETHER.

“The matter composing the cathode stream is,” continues Mr. Tesla in his letter, “to all evidence, reduced to matter of some primary form, heretofore not known, as such velocities and such violent impacts have probably never been studied or even attained before these extraordinary manifestations were observed. Is it not possible that the very ether vortexes which, according to Lord Kelvin’s ideal theory, compose the lumps, are dissolved, and that in the Roentgen phenomena we may witness a transformation of ordinary matter into ether? It is in this sense that, I think, Roentgen’s first hypothesis will be confirmed.

“The important fact pointed out early by Roentgen and confirmed by subsequent research — namely, that a body is the more opaque to the rays the denser it is — cannot be explained as satisfactorily under any other assumption as that of the rays being streams of matter, in which case such simple relation between opacity and density would necessarily exist. This relation is the more important in its bearing upon the nature of the rays, as it does not at all exist in lightgiving vibrations, and should consequently not be found to so marked a degree and under all conditions with vibrations, presumably similar to and approximating in frequency the light vibrations.

“An almost crucial test of the existence of material streams is afforded by the formation of shadows in space at a distance from the bulb. Such shadows could not be formed under the conditions described, except by streams of matter.”