Text: That Ether is a very substantial entity, far denser than any form of matter, has been gradually becoming clear to physicists. At first, we only said that it must be denser than lead or gold or platinum, but now we find that it must be out of all proportion denser. I have made an estimate of its density, in the light of electromagnetic theory, and it comes out inevitably huge. Every cubic millimetre contains as much substance as what, if it were matter, we should call a thousand tons. As the Ether is not matter in the ordinary sense of the term, our ordinary units of measurement are inappropriate ; but on the analogy of matter, the Ether is of the order a million million times as dense as water. All its properties are of supernormal magnitude. Its rate of vibration which enables us to see any ordinary object is five hundred million million per second : a number so great that to try to conceive such a number of vibrations per second simply dizzies us. The number of seconds which have passed since ancient geological periods of twenty million years ago is about this number. from 1933 lecture

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