X. On repulsion resulting from radiation. Influence of the residual gas.—(Preliminary notice.)

I have recently been engaged in experiments which are likely to throw much light on some obscure points in the theory of the repulsion resulting from radiation. In these I have been materially assisted by Professor Stokes, both in original suggestions and in the mathematical formulæ) necessary for the reduction of the results. Being prevented by other work from completing the experiments sufficiently to bring them before the Royal Society prior to the close of the session, I have thought that it might be of interest were I to publish a short abstract of the principal results I have obtained, reserving the details until they are ready to be brought forward in a more complete form. In the early days of this research, when it was found that no movement took place until the vacuum was so good as to be almost beyond the powers of an ordinary air-pump to produce, and that as the vacuum got more and more nearly absolute, so the force increased in power, it was justifiable to assume that the action would still take place when the minute trace of residual gas which theoretical reasoning proved to be present was removed. The first and most obvious explanation therefore was that the repulsive force was directly due to radiation. Further consideration, however, showed that the very best vacuum which I had succeeded in producing might contain enough matter to offer considerable resistance to motion. I have already pointed out that in some experiments, where the rarefaction was pushed to a very high point, the torsion beam appeared to be swinging in a viscous fluid (194); and this at once led me to think that the repulsion caused by radiation was indirectly due to a difference of thermometric heat between the black and white surfaces of the moving body (195), and that it might be due to a secondary action on the residual gas.