Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/298

Curious Questions and Solutions, Scientific and Historical.

Curious scientific questions opened upon us as, with unsated curiosity, we pursued backwards, to the uttermost limits, this remarkable branch of the advanced science of our time. Of course, as we projected our lines further and further into space, and thus proportionately back into past time, we ever expected that possibly, at some stage of these far-off journeys, the attenuating light-ray, when overtaken, would fail of characteristic reversion—would have, in fact, practically attenuated into irresponsive nothing, by that rapidly reducing process of the square of the distance. But no, we still pick up the ray, and still range through ether-filled space. The curious question as to the cessation of differential vibration, is indeed a remarkable feature of the case, and could, by itself, even if we had wanted other contributive data, have clearly shown that the spaces between the ether points, however small, were definite and measurable distances. But at the extreme end of the differentiation-vibration we were apparently no nearer to an empty and etherless space. Our messages have as yet unfailingly returned to us, if we except only a fair average, intercepted or destroyed by the fatal electro-light power of solar photospheres, or of any other occasionally encountered and dissolving force of that kind. The electro-light projection, as of course we know, cannot pass through its own kind, but is at once arrested and absorbed. Further on we shall see more of this, in the practical case of our own solar photosphere. Our message lines pass unimpeded through all bodies