Computer Science
Scientific paper
May 1900
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1900natur..62...80l&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 62, Issue 1595, pp. 80 (1900).
Computer Science
Scientific paper
REFERRING to Prof. J. J. Thomson's article on ``corpuscles'' in your issue of May 10, it occurs to me that the behaviour of corpuscular matter described therein may have some bearing on cometary phenomena. May not the structure of comets to some extent be explained by assuming that their tails are composed of aggregations of negatively charged particles of extremely minute size, answering to the free corpuscular matter as defined by Prof. Thomson, and which to a large degree may be formed by a sort of ``corpuscular dissociation,'' or detachment, taking place in the comet's nucleus when its temperature is elevated upon nearing the sun? Since Prof. Thomson's experiments indicate the presence of negatively charged matter in kathode rays having a much smaller mass than ordinary atoms, there is reason to believe that matter in this state has properties quite apart from matter in a much coarser state of atomic division. Postulating an electrostatic field as existing in interplanetary space, with the sun as a negative centre or source of electrostatic radiation, and assuming that a comet's tail is composed of these corpuscles, the gravitational force it may suffer, when in proximity to the sun, would perhaps be very small in comparison with the electrostatic force existing throughout the vast congregation of these extremely minute particles, and thereby account for the repulsion of the tails of comets when they approach the sun.
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