Inertia and Energy

Abstract

A LUCID account has been provided by Lord Rutherford in his James Watt lecture (NATURE, Jan. 25) of the recent extraordinary development in the world of atomic projectiles and rays, which would be incredible on the usual electric basis were it not that, from the nature of the subject, as soon as a result is announced it is capable of immediate test, with marvellous precision, by the experts in other laboratories. A basic principle in the speculative side of this subject is the identity of mass and energy, including extinction of structural atoms, which the chemical world, with its great tradition and achievement, appears to accept with equanimity ; it has, however, as now appears, been coming into question, but can of course be adjusted by the supposition that there are types of energy hitherto unrecognised. For, as Lord Rutherford insists, universal energy is an abstraction, unheard of a century ago, and repudiated even much later by great astronomers ; and energy as well as mass is relative, depending on the frame of reference.