Radiant Matter

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Radiant Matter is the term used to describe what British physicist William Crookes believed was a fourth state of matter, in a time when the atom was thought to be a small solid ball, indivisible and without motion. Crookes's experimental work in this field was the foundation of discoveries which eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics.

Crookes tubes

Two views of the Crookes tubes

By the 1870s, the nature of electricity was a unknown and many experiments were done to determine what cathode rays were. Earlier experiments where done within tubes with a low vacuum that possessed two metal electrodes, one at either end. When a high voltage was applied between the electrodes, the cathode rays were thought to travel in straight lines from the cathode (negative) end to the anode (positive) end, producing a glow that filled the tubes.

William Crookes was able to generate a higher vacuum in tubes (known as "Crookes Tubes) and found out that as he pumped more air out of the tubes, they became totally dark, except for the anode end, where the glass of the tube itself began to glow. This showed that they travel in straight lines and cause fluorescence in objects upon which they impact, producing great heat.

Crookes thought the cathode rays consisted of electrically charged atoms, but in 1897 Sir J. J. Thomson discovered they were not atoms, but a new particle, the first subatomic particle to be discovered, which was name "electron". Thus, Thomson proved that the cathode rays are streams of electrons.

In 1895, using the Crookes tube, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays.

Further reading