Thompson, following decades of inquiry into the fundamental properties of
both matter and the space between, proposed a radical new explanation for
the most fundamental properties of solid objects -- the existence of "the
vortex atom."
This was in direct contradiction to then prevailing 19th Century theories of
matter, in which atoms were still viewed as infinitesimal "small, hard bodies
[as] imagined by [the Roman poet] Lucretius, and endorsed by Newton ..."
Thompson's "vortex atoms" were envisioned, instead, as tiny, self-sustaining
"whirlpools" in the so-called "aether" -- which Thompson and his 19th Century
contemporaries increasingly believed extended throughout the Universe as an
all-pervasive, incompressible fluid.Material on this page extracted from http://www.enterprisemission.com/hyper1.html
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