A Very Penetrating Radiation in the Atmosphere

Abstract

IT is noteworthy that English physicists have taken very little interest in the progress which has been made during the last ten years in atmospheric electricity. This is the more remarkable seeing that some of the problems are problems in pure physics, and there is little doubt that they give evidence of phenomena of fundamental importance. To take one or two examples. There can now be no doubt that the earth is giving off a constant stream of negative electricity which passes at least into the upper atmosphere, and probably into cosmical space. Are we justified in treating this result of innumerable observations in all parts of the world as something which will be explained in due time by the old law of physics, or should we not recognise the possibility that we have here indications of a new property of matter The earth is a huge insulated mass of matter moving unrestrained under cosmical forces, and therefore may very well reveal a relationship between electricity and the motion of matter to which laboratory experiments could give no clue. This phenomenon is well worth the consideration of the mathematical physicists who are at present throwing all our preconceived ideas of electricity, mass, motion, and gravity into the melting-pot.