Solidified Light by John Harvey Kellogg

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 22, 1902

Solidified Light

By John Harvey Kellogg

J. H. KELLOGG

The remarkable discoveries in physics that have been made within the last few years are a great shock to the self-complacency of those philosophers who have imagined that the atomic theory and the Darwinian hypothesis solved all the mysteries of matter, dead and living. The atomic theory, though serving the chemist a useful purpose as a working hypothesis, has for many years been growing weak in its knees as a lucid explanation of phenomena. The discoveries made in relation to light and electricity have shown clearly enough that there must be something associated with matter quite different from ordinary atoms and molecules as understood by the atomic theory. The ether hypothesis has helped to piece out, but this, too, has fallen short. Now the X-ray, and the Becquerel ray, and other phenomena are brought forward with an array of phenomena which quite unsettles things for the chemist and physicist, and leaves us all at sea respecting the ultimate constitution of things.

The discovery of a light that could penetrate such opaque objects as a hardwood plank, two or three inches thick, and even thin sheets of metal, was sufficiently startling; but then the X-ray was produced by the electrical current, and we have become accustomed to look upon electricity as a sort of scientific wizard, and to expect new and startling things from those engaged in the study of this agent. It was not long, however, before the discovery was made that the X-ray, while opening to view the most obscure nooks and corners of the body, even penetrating the largest bones, and revealing the movements of the heart and lungs, and thus rendering the greatest service to surgeons and physicians, was at the same time a powerful agent for mischief, causing deep sloughs of the skin when too long applied, which showed great obstinacy in healing.

But then this very baneful property was soon turned to good account in the treatment of certain parasitic skin diseases, particularly lupus, or tubercular disease of the skin.

But now comes the surprising discovery that the X-ray is not the result of any human invention, that it is not dependent upon electrical machines nor electricians, but that it is widely produced in nature, that the aurora borealis may be a manifestation of this marvelous force emanating from the sun.

The discovery has been made that there are earthy substances closely resembling lime or chalk in appearance, which, as found in nature, and without manipulation of any sort, are constantly giving off X-rays in great quantities. Two of the substances, barium and uranium, have been long known to chemists; but a new substance, radium, has recently been discovered, which possesses this property to an extent ninety times as great as any previously known.

The new element possesses light in itself. It seems to be, in fact, a sort of crystallized or solidified light. A few grains of it shut up in a closed glass tube give off a light of sufficient intensity to enable one to read a book. A mass as big as an apple would serve as a table lamp; and a ceiling covered with it would secure perpetual daylight in a room.

Professor Thompson and others have shown that these luminous earths give off minute corpuscles which are less than one one-thousandth part as large as the molecules of hydrogen, heretofore supposed to be the smallest of all existing atoms. These corpuscles, or particles, are continually flying off into space at a speed almost equal to that of light, or nearly one hundred thousand miles a second. So small are these particles, however, that the ceiling of a room twenty feet square would, according to Professor Becquerel, give off only one two-hundredth of a grain of radium in one thousand years. Supposing the amount required to cover such a ceiling to be one hundred thousand grains, the supply of light would not cease nor diminish in less than one hundred million years.

A wonderful property of this light is that, while it is given off by a cold body, it is capable of heating the objects on which it falls. The writer has seen a piece of platinum glowing at a white heat under these wonderful rays. They produce chemical effects, as do the sun's rays. Many other astonishing properties have been pointed out.

The spectacle of light and heat coming out of a cold, opaque body like chalk, opens a field for scientific speculation not likely to be soon exhausted. It may be that the scientific world will discover at last that the inspired word which declares, “God is light,” is a simple statement of a profound and fundamental scientific fact. The discoveries of Becquerel, Currie, and Séguin in relation to the emanations from metals, open new and most wonderfully interesting fields for thought, and give hints of greater discoveries, whole new fields of discovery, yet to follow. At last we may all be able to see clearly the deep philosophy in Paul's declaration, “In him we live, and move, and have our being.”