Science: Solid Space?

Last week a vital, thick-set man with hair ruffled by nervous fingers, lectured in German and chalked hieroglyphics on a lecture room blackboard at University College, Nottingham, England. The Nottingham faculty and many a distinguished guest sat and listened intently, though only three of them could begin to comprehend the discourse. When the man finished they asked him to autograph the blackboard. He complied. Then the wise men of Nottingham had the blackboard varnished and stored away as a memento. The name scrawled on it is Albert Einstein.

The varnished figures represent an outline of Einstein’s newest theory: Solid Space. He offered no new formulae, only “the humble expression of my opinion.” He tried to lead his listeners through a chain of ideas as follows:

Man’s concept of Matter preceded his concept of Space. Euclid’s geometry was purely concerned with the relative position of concrete bodies, without reference to any continuum through which they moved. Not until Descartes (1596-1650) invented analytical geometry was absolute, continuous Space conceived.

A great step came when Newton (1642-1727) gave Space a definite physical reality in his theories of force accelerating bodies, the movement being measurable in reference to a really rigid body. The introduction of “ether” by Faraday (1791-1867) and Maxwell (1831-79) to explain their electro-magnetic field theories was the last great step before Einstein’s relativity theories.

Offshoot of relativity was the recognition of a duality in Space’s structure. The components of this real space are: 1) gravitation, 2) electromagnetism. Physicists have found it impossible to relate these two by mother equations.

Two years ago Dr. Einstein lay critically ill. Strange thoughts were coursing through his mind, this thought among them: why not add a directional quantity to the two components of Space and see what happens?

When well, he set to work, devised equations which confirmed his sick bed hopes and proved to him that he was striking upon a common denominator which would explain all physical phenomena.

By finer and finer analyses, man has broken down Matter from molecules, to atoms, to immaterial “particles” of radiation. No more paradoxical seems the new Einstein theory that Space is the stuff of which Matter is made, that Space is “solid.” Surest proof for this, one which Dr. Einstein hopes to have accomplished, is to derive the elements of Matter (electrons, protons, photons) from Space.

Whether or not Dr. Einstein has that accomplished as a laboratory feat, he accompanied his introduction of Solid Space with a rhetorical flourish which will doubtless confuse students for years to come. Meaning merely that Space had at last come into its own as the ultimate reality, he exclaimed: “Space is now having its revenge, so to speak, and is eating up Matter.”