Another point of view appeared
more plausible and simple at the outset, when there seemed reason to
consider the energy radiated by radioactive bodies as inexhaustible.
It was thought that the source of this energy was to be looked for
without the atom, and this idea may perfectly well he maintained at
the present day.
Radium on this hypothesis must be considered as a transformer
borrowing energy from the external medium and returning it in the form
of radiation. It is not impossible, even, to admit that the energy
which the atom of radium withdraws from the surrounding medium may
serve to keep up, not only the heat emitted and its complex radiation,
but also the dissociation, supposed to be endothermic, of this atom.
Such seems to be the idea of M. Debierne and also of M. Sagnac. It
does not seem to accord with the experiments that this borrowed energy
can be a part of the heat of the ambient medium; and, indeed, such a
phenomenon would be contrary to the principle of Carnot if we wished
(though we have seen how disputable is this extension) to extend this
principle to the phenomena which are produced in the very bosom of the
atom.
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