New York Times, November 2, 1930, Sunday
Section: Editorial, Page E2, 5965 words
Letters From Times Readers On Topics in the News;
MR. RUSSELL UPHOLDS THEORY OF A "TWO-WAY" UNIVERSE
Proton Is Not a "Hole," He Declares, Merely Because It Acts Like One
To the Editor of The New York Times:
The Times Editorial "This Month's Atom" has so filled these intervening days with answering questions as to whether Dr. Dirac's theory was in line with my cosmogony that I am constrained to answer it. Also, I might as well include the question so often asked regarding the comparative relationship of Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan's statement published some time ago, also in The Times, for both are interrelated.
The editorial says that "when an electron disappears the vacancy left behaves mathematically like a proton."
A hen seeing her duckling brood taking to water could not be more surprised than modern scientists in seeing this "hole" act like a proton. The proton is not a hole, however, as Dr. Dirac concludes, just as a duckling is not a chicken because it acts like one in respect to the hen. The hole is the vacuous force which acts as an expansion pressure force exerted against an equal compression pressure force which is located in mass and culminates at its centres.
Neither is the proton a hole because it acts like one in all respects save direction, more than an inward explosion toward a vacuum is like an outward explosion because it also acts like one in all respects save direction.
A Complete Cycle of Motion.
Modern science does not recognize the vacuous force in nature, due to the incomplete Newtonian concept which has given us a "one-way" universe instead of the "two-way" universe of my cosmogony. If Newton had completed his gravitational observations and Kepler had been as curious about unmentioned vacuous focus as he was regarding the focus he did mention, science would now understand what this newly discovered negative "hole which acts like a proton" really is and I would not be in the position of being disliked by my scientific friends for playing the part of Copernicus to their Ptolemy.
The following is a brief explanation of the complete cycle of motion which will explain what Dirac found, what he has not yet found and what he and Lodge and others say they do not understand regarding that which he has found.
The electron is a doubly charged mass. The action of integrating any mass is a generative or condensive one which is called the attraction of gravitation. This causes mass to appear around a common centre of high compression pressure and gives rise to the commonly believed error that matter attracts matter, which is not true to nature. The reaction to this action of compression is the expansion of the field which has been rendered vacuous by thus being drawn upon by the gravitative, in-drawing, endothermic action of condensation. The expansion of the residual volume, or field surrounding the mass, is a vacuity which is as equally minus the original equilibrium of the total volumes as the centre of the mass is plus that equilibrium.
Source of an Error.
The force represented by that vacuity is an expansion pressure which is the equal and opposite of the gravitative compression pressure and gives rise to that commonly believed error of light repulsion which is not true of nature.
The "hole" that Dirac describes is the vacuous force of the expansion stroke of the universal pump. This force is correctly described as negative electricity, negative discharge, radiation, radio-activity or by any other name which results in the dis-appearance of mass into its surrounding tenuous field.
On the contrary, the high pressure point of dense mass is the condensive force which is the compression stroke of the universal pump. This force is correctly described as positive electricity, positive charge, gravitation, condensation or by any other name which results in the appearance of mass into solidity.
These two opposing actions and reactions constitute the electro-magnetic oscillations, or compression-expansion sequences, which are present in every mass and which constitute the mechanistic or life principle of the universe. These sequences have a periodicity of preponderances which are first preponderantly generative and then preponderantly degenerative, which we know of as the phenomena of growth.
We have now completed the cycle of appearance and disappearance of mass through the series of endothermic, inbreathing, positive oscillations of compression pressure and exothermic, outbreathing, negative oscillations of expansion pressure which is the dual characteristic of electricity; but we have one more characteristic of nature as a result of these action and reaction sequences.
This one other attribute of nature is the reproducive or regenerative force which is set up solely by the resistance of each expression of force against the other.
Dual Character of Force.
This characteristic attribute of nature to repeat herself, and to do so in waves or striations of periodicities, is because of the dual character of force to express itself always in equal opposition of force.
Every effect of motion thus results in the production of the opposite effect, therefore the negative reaction which results in the disappearance of the electron is accompanied by its equal and opposite action which causes the reappearance of the mass by the reverse action of the "hole."
Hence there can be no such thing as a positively charged mass or a negatively charged mass. All charging masses are simultaneously dis-charging and all discharging masses are simultaneously recharging other masses in this two-way universe of motion. Energy is kept continually moving between the high-pressure hot points of gravitative centres and the low-pressure cold areas of the evacuated fields which surround all masses.
This constant interchange is the cause of the motion of force which moves only for one purpose, and that is to find an equilibrium position for which it is ever in search of and never finds, for that position is itself always in motion.
While in search of this ever-moving position the work of the universe, and of man, is performed. There is no other way that work can be performed than by the oscillations of this dually acting electric force as it surges back and forth between the two polar dead centres of force, the gravitative focus and the vacuous focus.
It matters not whether this two-way interchange of potential is between the poles of a battery, which we call electric current, or between dynamos or solenoids, which we call lines of force, or between the high and low barometric pressure position of the weather map, which we call winds, or between the sun and planets, which we call radiant energy, or between elements, which we call radio-activity -- all are the same. All are seeking an ever-changing equilibrium position and kept continually on the go and producing that thing which we call energy.
Every mass in the universe is a complete pump oscillating between two equilibrium dead centres of opposed force. Every two masses are reciprocating, collaborating and co-ordinating their respective energies, each in accordance with its respective and comparative potential. Each mass in the universe is revolving around every other mass in elliptical orbits determined by their mutual ever-moving compression and expansion foci.
All masses, whether electrons in hot suns or electrons in cold space, are simultaneously integrating by their generative oscillation, and disintegrating by their opposed radiative one. This is the complete cycle of the motion of force toward which Dirac has made a step in the right direction.
Dr. Millikan's Statements.
Robert Andrews Millikan is the only other man who, to my knowledge, has begun to divine nature's secret of the duality of force and the continuity of creation in cycles. Dr. Millikan declares: "In the hot stars and the sun, matter is being disintegrated into energy or radiation; in the unimaginably cold expanse of infinite space, radiation or energy is being reintegrated into matter."
If Dr. Millikan had written that all mass, whether in hot suns or cold space, is integrating by its contractive oscillation (which is caused by the cold of its preceding expansive one) and that it is disintegrating by the heat of its preceding contractive one, he would have been right.
To say, however, that matter is disintegrating in hot masses and integrating in cold space is not in keeping with nature's method of creation, for it would not account for the integration of mass in hot suns except by miracles or by "divine ordainment," as they said in the Middle Ages, nor would it account for the disintegration of mass in cold space except by the same method.
In order for that principle to work, Dr. Millikan would have to find a critical point of temperature below which all matter integrated and above which it all disintegrated. This is impossible, for all matter has different melting points, according to its pressures or densities, these points rising as pressures rise.
We know that above these critical points at which all elements melt the solids disintegrate into liquids, then into vapors and then into gases. But the very act of disintegrating by radiation causes a relatively cold reaction to take place which reintegrates. Both processes are therefore taking place above and below the melting point, and this is as true along the trail of a comet, which is luminous and relatively hot in its contractive oscillations at 240 degrees below zero as it is true in Viga's heart which is relatively cold in its expansive oscillations at 300,000 degrees or more.
WALTER RUSSELL.
New York, Oct. 29, 1930.