So that a kind of minimum estimate of aetherial
density, on this basis, would be something like ten thousand million times
that of platinum."
And further on he adds that this density may well turn out to be fifty
thousand million times that of platinum. "The densest matter known," he
says, "is trivial and gossamer-like compared with the unmodified aether in
the same space."
Incredible as this seems to our ordinary ideas, it is undoubtedly an
understatement rather than an exaggeration of the true proportion as
observed in the case of koilon. We shall understand how this can be so if
we remember that koilon seems absolutely homogeneous and solid even when
examined by a power of magnification which makes physical atoms appear in
size and arrangement like cottages scattered over a lonely moor, and when
we further add to this the recollection that the bubbles of which these
atoms in turn are composed are themselves what may be not inaptly called
fragments of nothingness.
In the same pamphlet Sir Oliver Lodge makes a very striking estimate of the
intrinsic energy of the aether. He says: "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.
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