. The science-history of the universe . es experiments, M. writes: The English scientist claimed that whenexhausted to this point the residue no longer has the prop-erties of ordinary gases. According to him it is a hyper-gas as different from the true gaseous state as the latter isfrom the liquid state and forming a fourth condition of AN ANALYSIS OF MATTER 15 matter, following the solid, the liquid and the gas proper;this he called radiant matter. Crookes desired to deter-mine the nature of this fourth state of matter. In reality,the gas, rarefied to the millionth of an atmosphere,
. The science-history of the universe . es experiments, M. writes: The English scientist claimed that whenexhausted to this point the residue no longer has the prop-erties of ordinary gases. According to him it is a hyper-gas as different from the true gaseous state as the latter isfrom the liquid state and forming a fourth condition of AN ANALYSIS OF MATTER 15 matter, following the solid, the liquid and the gas proper;this he called radiant matter. Crookes desired to deter-mine the nature of this fourth state of matter. In reality,the gas, rarefied to the millionth of an atmosphere, has notacquired, by this fact alone, an entirely new character;but it has acquired it most certainly when electrification isadded to the rarefaction, and it is then that it constitutesthe emanation or the cathode ray. The vacuum must not be pushed too far; if one goesbeyond the millionth of an atmosphere—and the perfectionof mechanism allows going much further than that—thegaseous residue cannot be electrified; electricity will not. A Common Form of X-ray Tube. pass through; there is no longer a current. The electricforce is incapable of penetrating absolute vacuum. Theimportance of this principle is very great from the theo-retical point of view; it furnishes, in fact, a new test formatter. But in Crookes tube, in which the vacuum has beenpushed to one millionth, the current behaves itself ratherdifferently from what it does in the tubes where the rare-faction is less. The path of the current has lost much ofits brilliancy; it no longer appears as an uncertain glow,wavering, striated, of a hue intermediate between rose andviolet. All the remainder of the interior of the bulb nowremains dark. The electricity passes as before between thepositive electrode and the cathode or negative po-le. Theprincipal flow has been joined by a secondary one; from 16 PHYSICS all points of the tube the positive currents are directedtoward the cathode and go to reinforce the principal cur-rent
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