M. Bloch has succeeded in
disentangling the phenomena, which are here very complex, and in
showing that the ions produced are of considerable dimensions; for
their speed in the same conditions is on the average a thousand times
less than that of ions due to the X rays. M. Bloch has established
also that the conductivity of recently-prepared gases, already studied
by several authors, was analogous to that which is produced by
phosphorus, and that it is intimately connected with the presence of
the very tenuous solid or liquid dust which these gases carry with
them, while the ions are of the same order of magnitude. These large
ions exist, moreover, in small quantities in the atmosphere; and M.
Langevin lately succeeded in revealing their presence.
It may happen, and this not without singularly complicating matters,
that the ions which were in the midst of material molecules produce,
as the result of collisions, new divisions in these last. Other ions
are thus born, and this production is in part compensated for by
recombinations between ions of opposite signs.
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