RankingsPrimerArbiterPhysicistMathematicianContrarianQESites logClaimsSourcesResearch notes

Internet Archive (archive.org): 2026-10-04

Access: archive.org advanced-search API and item download URLs, fetched with curl (scripted fetch was used for the API and file downloads; Chrome was used for the Google searches that pointed here). All files are public-domain scans. Copies are in research/files/.

Queries

  • creator:(Lodge) AND (title:(ether) OR title:(aether)): 14 items, listed below.
  • title:(philosophical magazine) AND year 1907: no hits (the volumes have no year metadata).
  • Identifier pattern londonedinburg6131907lond*: hit, Phil. Mag. 6th ser. v.13 (Jan-July 1907).
  • Identifier pattern londonedinburg639*: hit, Phil. Mag. 6th ser. v.39 (Jan-June 1920).
  • Identifier pattern londonedinburg62*: returns 1910-1915 volumes only. The 1901 volume with Kelvin's paper was not found.
  • title:("electricity and matter") AND creator:(thomson): 10 items. creator:(Lodge, Oliver) AND title:(electrons): 10 items.
  • creator:(Lodge) AND title:("ether and reality"): 0 hits.
  • title:("proceedings of the royal institution") AND year 1907-1910: 0 relevant hits (only Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria).

Lodge items found (identifier | title | year)

  • jstor-25106133 | The Ether of Space (North American Review) | 1908. This is the project document itself.
  • etherofspace00lodguoft, etherspace00lodggoog, the-ether-of-space-oliver-lodge | The Ether of Space (book) | 1909
  • philtrans01940372 / paper-doi-10_1098_rspl_1892_0014 | Aberration Problems ... (Proc. abstract) | 1892
  • philtrans04916537 | Aberration Problems ... with Some New Experiments (Phil. Trans. A 184) | 1893. Downloaded (10.7 MB, not yet read)
  • philtrans08143045 / philtrans00582676 / paper-doi-10_1098_rspl_1897_0008 | Experiments on the Absence of Mechanical Connexion between Ether and Matter | 1897. Downloaded the 2-page Proc. Roy. Soc. abstract
  • paper-doi-10_1038_075519a0 | Modern Views of the Ether, Nature 75: 519-522 (28 Mar 1907) | 1907. Downloaded
  • b21501294 | Matter, Ether, and Motion | 1899 (not downloaded)
  • myphilosophyrepr0000oliv | My Philosophy, Representing My Views on the Many Functions of the Ether of Space | 1933 (not downloaded; probably a lending-library item)
  • electronsornatur00lodgrich | Electrons, or the Nature and Properties of Negative Electricity | 1906. Downloaded (OCR text)
  • electricitymatte00thomuoft | J. J. Thomson, Electricity and Matter (Silliman Lectures) | 1904. Downloaded (OCR text)
  • londonedinburg6131907lond | Phil. Mag. ser. 6 v.13 (1907). Downloaded (OCR text, 1.6 MB)
  • londonedinburg6391920lond | Phil. Mag. ser. 6 v.39 (1920). Downloaded (OCR text)

Findings

1. The April 1907 Phil. Mag. paper that the project document cites (Priority 1)

Lodge, O., "The Density of the Æther", Phil. Mag. ser. 6, vol. 13, no. 76 (April 1907), pp. 488-506 [web] https://archive.org/details/londonedinburg6131907lond (OCR text, lines about 32130-33330). This is the paper that the p.7 footnote of "The Ether of Space" points to. The claims.md note that "the density figure rests on this article's statement alone" can now be resolved: the derivation exists and is public.

What it contains [web, read from OCR; some exponents garbled, so cross-checked against the 1909 book's Appendix 2 and Kragh's quotation]: - Part I, §§1-2: the starting idea. 4πμ (the "ungeometrical part" of self-inductance) is read as an ether density, and 4π/K as an ether elasticity or rigidity. The rigidity is "probably due to the æther's own intrinsic energy of constitution", on Kelvin's hydrodynamic lines. - §3: the ether is "exceedingly, perhaps infinitely, incompressible". The grounds are the Cavendish surface-charge experiment, as repeated by Maxwell and by the Principal of Glasgow, and gravitation. - §5: a minimum estimate from the porosity of platinum atoms made of electrons: "something like ten-thousand-million times that of platinum". - §§6-11: the derivation. - First, an electron is treated as a sphere of radius a moving through an incompressible perfect liquid of density ρ. Its effective mass is 2πρa³. - Second, its magnetic field H = eu sinθ / r² is treated as an ether circulation w along the lines of induction, with ½ρw² = μH²/8π. - Integrating gives m = (8/3)πρa³(w₀/u)². Here w₀ is the circulation speed at the electron's equator and u is the electron's speed. - Assuming w₀ ≈ u gives m ≈ twice the mass of ether in the electron's volume. If w₀ < u, ρ would have to be even larger. - §12: "the mass of an electron is comparable with 10⁻²⁷ gramme, while the volume is comparable with 10⁻[39?] c.c.; so that the density of the medium must be of the order 10¹² grammes per c.c." The volume exponent is garbled in the OCR. The 1909 book says "linear dimension of an electron is 10⁻¹³ centimetre diameter". - Also in §12: "electrostatic rigidity ... 10³³ dynes per sq. cm." and intrinsic energy "comparable with 10³³ ergs per c.c.; or say 100 foot-lbs. per atomic volume". - And: "3 × 10¹⁷ kilowatt-hours, or the total output of a million-kilowatt power station for thirty million years, exists permanently, and at present inaccessibly, in every cubic millimetre of space." The figures 10¹², 10³³ and 3×10¹⁷ are confirmed by Kragh's quotation, see the arXiv note. - §13: "It is by far the most stationary body in existence; though it is endowed with high intrinsic energy of local movement, analogous to turbulence, conferring on it gyrostatic properties." This is the same position as claims 1 and 4 of the project. - §14: consequences. - Light amplitude near the sun is about 10⁻¹⁷ of a wavelength. - Magnetic ether drift is about 0.003 cm/s (4 inches an hour) in a 12,000-gauss field. - An ether speed of 1 cm/s would need a field of four million c.g.s. units. - Part II (§§16-26): an unpublished 1892-93 experiment (Priority 1, new experimental material). - Lodge looked for an ether flow along magnetic lines of force. Four brass bobbins, each 44 cm long with 7,000 turns, were set round the 1-metre optical square of his 1893 aberration apparatus. Light went four times round, in opposite directions, through about 1,408 cm of virtual path. - Liquids tried: air, water and CS₂. The field was calibrated by Faraday rotation in CS₂ (83° total; Rayleigh's Verdet constant). - Runs were made in February 1893 and November 1893. The November runs followed letters from Joseph Larmor (28 Oct and 1 Nov 1893), which are quoted. Larmor wrote: "A magnetic field should carry the light along with it". - Result: no fringe shift at 1/50 band. Lodge concludes "either that the theory about longitudinal magnetic drift is erroneous, or else that the ether of space is at least eight times as dense as platinum" (§25). - §26: "fifty thousand million times the ordinary material density of platinum ... every cubic millimetre of space contains the equivalent of a thousand tons, and every part of it must be internally squirming with the velocity of light." - Appendix A: quotations from earlier writers who allowed a dense ether. - Larmor, Phil. Trans. 185 (1894) pp.773-805: ether flow as magnetic induction. Larmor notes such a density "would require the ether to be absolutely stationary, except in a magnetic field". - G. F. FitzGerald, Helmholtz Memorial Lecture 1896: ether "density may be greater than that of platinum"; turbulent energy about 10²² c.g.s. - Heaviside, Electrician 1883: the perfect-liquid magnetic analogue. - Kelvin 1872: the fluid-flow representation of magnetism, and the origin of the word "permeability". - Appendix B: Larmor's comments on the proofs (Priority 2: comment by a leading contemporary). - Larmor raises Rayleigh's objection that a rotationally elastic ether round a fixed magnet would "choke". - He argues that the electron sheds its circulation as a wake, so no cumulative strain builds up "if the inertia of æther is sufficiently great". - His postscript estimate (OCR garbled) suggests the ether density might need to "exceed say 10¹⁶". Lodge's footnote says "The numerical index of each of these estimates would by me be reduced by unity".

Bearing on claims. - Claims 2-3: this gives the full derivation that the 1908 article omits. ρ = (electron mass)/(electron volume), with the circulation-speed assumption w₀ ≈ u. - Claims 1 and 4: the stationary, gyrostatic ether. - Claim 5: a second unpublished negative experiment, beside the spinning discs.

Arithmetic lead for reviewers [computation, not in source]: - 10³³ erg/cc × 10⁻³ cc = 10³⁰ erg = 10²³ J ≈ 2.8×10¹⁶ kWh per mm³. - Lodge's stated 3×10¹⁷ kWh (million kW × 30 Myr ≈ 2.6×10¹⁷ kWh ≈ 9.5×10²³ J) is about 10 times larger. - So the factor of about 10 found by the deep read in the 1908 horsepower figure is already present in the 1907 paper. The 1908 figure (10⁶ hp × 40 Myr ≈ 9.4×10²³ J) is a unit conversion of the 1907 figure. Whether this is a slip or rests on an unstated factor is not settled by the text. - By contrast, "100 foot-lbs per atomic volume" (about 135 J for 10⁻²⁴ cc) is consistent with 10³³ erg/cc.

2. Lodge, "Note on a Possible Structure for the Ether", Phil. Mag. ser. 6, vol. 39 (Feb 1920), pp. 170-174 (Priority 1)

[web] https://archive.org/details/londonedinburg6391920lond (OCR lines about 11240-11480). Written in reply to L. Silberstein's paper on a Stokes-type ether (Silberstein's paper is dated 22 Dec 1919 and precedes it in the same issue). - Lodge restates the 1907 density argument and points readers to it. - Turbulence: in Kelvin's laminar vortex model (Phil. Mag. Oct 1887, p.350) the wave speed is about 0.47 of the turbulent speed. FitzGerald's Collected Papers (pp.457, 486) back a "turbulent liquid" ether. - Graininess and energy: the "ether may quite well contain a linear dimension of the order 10⁻³⁰ or 10⁻³³ centim., and an energy of 10³⁰ or 10³³ ergs per cubic centimetre". The exponents are read as Kragh reads them; the OCR is garbled. - Gravity and light bending through a variable ether dielectric constant. - An electron sets up a radial tension varying as 1/r. This reduces the ether's circulation energy nearby without changing its density. - Refractive index n = 1 + 2γM/(rc²), and K/K₀ = 1 + 4γM/(rc²), "the second term being Einstein's deflexion". Here γ is the gravitational constant, M the mass, r the distance and c the speed of light. - The deficiency is "of the order 10⁻[?]" just outside an electron and 10⁻⁶ just outside the Sun. - "How the ether can be tied into the knots which we call electrons ... remains to be discovered." - He quotes the 1907 edition of Modern Views of Electricity, pp.830 ff.

Bearing. Claims 1-2: Lodge's post-relativity statement of the same ether. The variable-dielectric account of light bending is related to later "polarizable vacuum" models. [memory, medium] H. E. Puthoff, "Polarizable-vacuum (PV) approach to general relativity", Found. Phys. 32 (2002), uses K = exp(2GM/rc²), which to first order is Lodge's 1 + 2GM/rc² for the index.

3. Lodge 1897 Proc. Roy. Soc. abstract, "Experiments on the Absence of Mechanical Connection between Ether and Matter" (received 19 Jan, read 4 Mar 1897) (Priority 1)

[web] https://archive.org/details/philtrans08143045 (2 pp.) - The work was done with "his assistant, Mr. Davies". - Steel discs were run "chiefly at 3000 revolutions a minute". (The 1908 article says 4,000 rpm.) - The discs were replaced by "a much more massive lump of iron, weighing [about 1] ton", with the light close to the moving surface. The iron was then strongly magnetised, and an electrified third disc was added. - "in none of these ways is the velocity of light at all appreciably affected ... no viscous connexion between the ether and matter of observable magnitude ... whatever motion moving matter may confer upon the ether must be of an irrotational kind." - He also suggests rotating the optical apparatus instead (a Sagnac-type idea) and mentions the earth's rotation.

Bearing. Claim 5. The full Phil. Trans. A 189 (1897) paper and the 1893 Phil. Trans. A 184 paper (downloaded, 10.7 MB, not yet read) hold the data that the 1908 article reports "without data".

4. Nature 75: 519-522 (28 March 1907), "Modern Views of the Ether" (Priority 1)

[web] https://archive.org/details/paper-doi-10_1038_075519a0. Page 1 was read from a rendered image. - This is the concluding chapter of the new edition of Modern Views of Electricity. - The ether density is "comparable to a billion times the density of water". "There is nothing paradoxical, nor, so far as I can see, improbable, about these figures." - "the inertia of matter must be a mere residual fraction of the inertia of the continuous incompressible complex fluid". - It sets out electric rigidity (4π/K) and magnetic inertia (4πμ) as the ether's two properties, a "perfect" elasticity up to a critical shear, and electricity as the ether's positive and negative "constituents". Pages 2-4 were not read.

5. J. J. Thomson, Electricity and Matter (1904), pp.25-27 (Priority 2: the source of the "e m" claim)

[web] https://archive.org/details/electricitymatte00thomuoft. Section "Moment of Momentum Due to an Electrified Point and a Magnetic Pole". - Thomson: the field momentum circles the line AB from the charge to the pole, "that possessed by a top spinning around AB"; "we obtain the very simple expression em as the value of the moment of momentum about AB". - He then uses this to derive the force on a moving charge or pole. - This is the result Lodge cites on p.10 of the project document. - Lodge's Electrons (1906) restates it: "the moment of momentum appropriate to a pole m and a charge e is simply em" [web] https://archive.org/details/electronsornatur00lodgrich. It cites Thomson, Phil. Mag., April 1899, p.416.

Not done here

  • Kelvin 1901 ("On ether and gravitational matter through infinite space"), the 1901 Phil. Mag. volume, was not found under the guessed identifiers.
  • The 1893 Phil. Trans. PDF was not read.
  • My Philosophy (1933) and Matter, Ether and Motion (1899) were not opened.