We may also address ourselves to a more noble form of energy, and ask
ourselves whether we are not, for the first time, in presence of a
transformation of gravitational energy. It may be singular, but it is
not absurd, to suppose that the unit of mass of radium is not attached
to the earth with the same intensity as an inert body. M. Sagnac has
commenced some experiments, as yet unpublished, in order to study the
laws of the fall of a fragment of radium. They are necessarily very
delicate, and the energetic and ingenious physicist has not yet
succeeded in finishing them.[46] Let us suppose that he succeeds in
demonstrating that the intensity of gravity is less for radium than
for the platinum or the copper of which the pendulums used to
illustrate the law of Newton are generally made; it would then be
possible still to think that the laws of universal attraction are
perfectly exact as regards the stars, and that ponderability is really
a particular case of universal attraction, while in the case of
radioactive bodies part of the gravitational energy is transformed in
the course of its evolution and appears in the form of active
radiation.
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