The Astronomy of the Atom

Abstract

The world is just entering upon a period of development of atomic mechanics, or of the astronomy of the atom, which has many points in common with the period of development of celestial mechanics which occupied the two or two and a half centuries following Galileo. Celestial mechanics was made possible through the invention of the telescope. The spectroscope bears precisely an analogous position with respect to atomic mechanics. The telescope made it possible to determine the exact orbits of heavenly bodies and to check by precise observation of such phenomena as the time of eclipses the theoretical results which are consequences of the Newtonian laws. Similarly, to-day the spectroscope has furnished the physicists with means for the quantitative testing of the recently developed laws of atomic mechanics, and it is to-day furnishing as exacting proof of the orbital theory of electronic motions as the telescope furnished a century earlier for the orbital theory of the motions of heavenly bodies.

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