The Stoney prediction.
About the man who discovered the electron, and the relation between mass and energy.
The existence of the electron was predicted by professor George Johnstone Stoney in 1874, and later proven by Thomson.
Poincaré, one of the best mathematicians ever, knew Einstein personally, and said he was a poor mathematician. But he also said something interesting about the young Einstein. Because of his exceptional ability to think simultaneously in all directions, Poincaré kept it for possible, he would make one day a great discovery. Well, he was right about that.
Please don't get me wrong about Einstein, but I do like his attitude, as if he discovered relativity all by himself, just by taking things others say, not for granted.
In reality however, Einstein was well aware of the work of Stoney, this brilliant experimenter. He was also aware of the works of Lorenz, who created the basic formulas for relativity, which EInstein needed badly. Einstein also knew the works of Poincaré, who proved the relation between mass and energy, much before Einstein had the idea. EInstein used their achievements, like items from the super market. This is legitimate, but things go in the wrong direction when he 'forgets' to mention his sources. However it develops finally a bad smell, when he presents 'his' great discoveries simply based upon this. Such disrespect of intellectual property, to my opinion is unworthy for every person.
Relativity was in all modesty, DISCOVERED by Professor Stoney, who never made a big show out of it. Later documented with repeatable EXPERIMENTS by Thomson, which was used also by Poincaré to PROVE it. Already Lorenz put the formulas for TIME DILLETATION (compression of time, if approaching speed of light) on paper, the so called Lorenz transformations. And then after all of that came Einstein, who initially tried not to mention that he used their work.
Stoney presented his discovery to the London scientific association called 'Fellows of the Royal Society' who did not understand what diamonds they were given, and not looked at it for decades. It was simply overseen and forgotten. Well luckily, somebody dug out this discovery, even when it was decades later. And no, it was not young Einstein who did that. It was the brilliant French Mathematician Poincaré. He realized much later, the Discovery of Stoney may have been the greatest ever. Just there was no mathematical proof. No calculations, no formulas.
Poincaré picked up Stoney's observations, and the experements Thomson did, in which mass is proven to increases by high velocity. This resulted in the formula E=Mc² by Poincaré. Which proved at the same time, Stoney's assumptions were true.
Also to mention here, the slowing down of time at high speed, was proven by the Dutch Professor Lorenz, long before Einstein, and the so called 'Lorenz Transformations' describe how this works.
Einstein used the Lorenz Transformation, to blatantly derive E=Mc² the 'Einstein way'. (Also from Maxwell's wave theory it can be derived, but that is much more difficult). However Poincaré proved this a long time before already. So, what Einstein did, was no discovery, and no new theory at all. He just combined things which others prepared.
So lets talk about some discoveries here, by modest people. Let's talk about this great man Stoney, who predicted the Electron as well as relativity.
Here is what Stoney said: Initially, most models begin with practical observations. Or, if such are impossible, with imaginary situations. Both can be done. Then from this, an unproven model is constructed, describing the behavior of what we (think) we have seen. The model may be unproven, but appears to work.
Interestingly, at this point, this model can be useful. Logically it describes what we see, because the model was made like that. A special use comes however, when this model can now explain things we could not explain before, and a greater use comes when it predicts things which were so far unknown.
Yet, the next progress is, when the model is partially, or fully proven mathematically. Then we have not a model, but we have a theory. Predictions can be made with theories, which predictions may come true if the theory is right.
The opposite may also happen, if a prediction turns out to be untrue, like when something occurs in contradiction to it. That is evidence, the theory needs as revision. These words, about the definition a a theory, were Stoney's.
Stoney was working around the year 1870. I want to point out the brilliancy of his discovery. Just Imagine yourself if a time, where people knew, electricity was invisible and could flow through wires, like water flows through a pipe. But for the rest of it, electricity was just abracadabra. That was Stoney's world he lived in. Not a single person on the whole planet had a clue about the origin of electriciy, and any books or persons who tried to explain it, were all wrong.
Already in 1752, Benjamin Franklin suspected, there is 'something' inside clouds, which can cause lightning. At least he was right, this something was already inside the cloud, before it came out. He tried to tap that with a kite and wire. Lucky for him, lightning refused to strike his kite, but he is generally still credited as the first person who defined electricity the right way. So yes, something flows through a wire. It can go in at the one end and come out at the other. After Benjamin Franklin, things got stuck for 1/8 of a MILLENIUM, before someone else was going to find out WHAT EXECTLY flows thought the wire.
Now here comes George Johnstone Stoney and finds that out all by himself. So all other scientists were wrong, and he came to the conclusion, there must be particles smaller than the smallest known. He also found out, this particle we later called an 'electron' have not only a mass, but also a charge. He could not prove it, but it was like said, a model, and he had an estimation of the charge. The number he came up with, was a factor 16 too low. Imagine him in the year 1870. This is such a weird situation. They had already batteries, radio transmission, and telephone. But what 'magic' makes it work? Well, electricity, but what is that? Nobody had the faintest idea. All books were full of nonsense.
In this light you need to see the brilliancy of this discovery, because like everybody, he was initially put on the wrong track for decades, by the science of those days. That makes his discovery so remarkable.
George Johnstone Stoney.... what a GENIUS that was!
Even today we call it 'current'.
Even today we say, current flows through a wire. That is a before-Stoney expression, but we never got rid if it. Look at a river, what flows there? There is a current of water, which is the right expression. There is not just 'current' flowing. That would be the wrong expression, because WATER is flowing. Not, CURRENT is flowing. But this wrong wording comes from the fact they had no idea about what it was.
At this level was his discovery. Since 1873 we know, ELECTRONS flow. Nothing else. And he calculated even their charge with only a factor 16 error. This is so brilliant, because he was the only person on earth, understanding this.
His findings were presented in 1874, and qualified 'interesting' by his fellow scientists. Soon others closed in on his theory, which should be no surprise, because many things could be explained a lot better with his theory.
As this kicked aside some other views on it, and as there was no practical application, scientists for the next quarter of a century (Yes!!!) regarded this discovery not important.
More experiments by others
In those days it was trendy to experiment with cathode ray tubes. It must have been fun to work with, but imagine not a soul really understood the physics behind it. Though of course the prediction of George Johnstone Stoney, it were 'probably charged particles' was a break through. This was the first particle accelerator. It gets even more interesting, when Thomson found out the particles (electrons) gain mass by acceleration. Even the formulas for that, E=Mc² was proven later correctly by Poincaré, based on this experiment, done with that very tube, pictured here. And no, not by EInstein. |
The tube itself is at low vacuum, and gas filled, and the gas is non-visible lighting, so the phosphorous layer stays dark except for the spot where electrons hit. The gas pressure (or molecule density) is low enough to allow electrons to travel along the vacuum, without hitting too much gas atoms. Yet if one is hit, it gets ionized, and it falls apart in the positive ion and the negative electron . The positive ion travels to the negative cathode. As it hit the cathode with great energy, this releases new electrons, and a chain reaction begins if the cathode to anode voltage is high enough. So it 'fires' at a certain voltage. Through a small slot hole, a fraction of the electrons peep out with moderate speed. They would return to Anode1, as they are negatively charged, but the acceleration anode has an much higher voltage, and it wins. At the slot of the Acceleration anode, the electrons come out with very high speed. These electrons hit the phosphorous layer, and it lights up.
Then came Joseph J. Thomson
In 1897, Joseph J. Thomson presented a practical proof of George Stoney's prediction, using the original cathode ray tube as pictured above. And right after he discovered relativity, when Einstein was still working as a clerk in the patent office. Looking at a piece of history... well this sure is one. If you think Fleming and von Lieben invented the electron tube, it means you think this cathode ray tube is not an electron tube.
Working with electrons may seem something logical today, but you need to see, this was in a time, where they only knew something flows from 'plus' to 'minus'. With that knowledge, which was even wrong, because electrons flow from minus to plus, Thomson had to work. Yet that didn't bother him, to prove electrons exist. He was able to determine the ratio between mass and charge of an electron, by at first deflect the bream electrically and then bring it back to the center by adding magnetic deflection. From this results a ratio as a plain number, which he can determine very precise. Of course this ratio included all the variables of his set up, like the number of coil windings and all kind of things. However it gave him a number.
As a second step, he increased the acceleration anode voltage by a certain factor, and in order to get the beam in the center again, that required another factor. Now that other factor can be derived from the first, if you know the change in anode voltage. Just results were not as he expected. The conclusion of this was, the ratio of mass to charge had increased. Just what caused it, was unknown. Now this was for the first time a scientist saw this, and even came up with an explanation, and an experimental formula. He said the change of mass, is causes by absorption of the electrical energy. Thus, presenting a relation between mass and energy. In the end he came up an experimental formula. E=3/4Mv². Three years later, In 1900, a French mathematics genius, Henri Poincaré, could prove and correct Thomson's formula, it had to be E= Mv². The relation between mass and speed, was discovered before and without Einstein.