Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1901 — AN OLD THEORY CHALLENGED. [ARTICLE]

AN OLD THEORY CHALLENGED.

Recent Researches Tend to Prove That Matter Cgn Be Destroyed. The whole system of modern chemistry is based upon the axiom of the indestructibility of matter, and that indestructibility is proved by the permanence of the weight of a given substance through all the physical or chemical stages it is made to undergo. Any experiments, therefore, which shake our belief in that primary property of matter must have a far-reach-ing effect. Landolt’s classical researches in 1893 embodied the first work done with all the modern instruments of precision. Certain minute changes of weight were then placed in evidence, and these have since been confirmed. A. Heydweiller has endeavored to trace some connection between the change of weight and the changes in other physical properties, such as magnetic permeability, electrolytic dissociation and material or optjfal density. He has failed to trace any such connection, though he has distinctly established a diminution of weight of about one part in 60,000,000 in a number of reactions, such as the mixture of copper sulphate with water, where a lost of weight of one milligramme was observed. Researches such as these take place in the extreme borderland of science, but the logical outcome of the results would be nothing less than the destruction of matter.—A. Heydweiller, in Physikalische Zeitschrift.