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Generating vortex rings, an illustration in A.E. Dolbear, Modes of Motion, or Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena (Boston, 1897). "It is thought by some persons not improbable," wrote Prof. Dolbear, "that the atoms of matter are minute vortex rings of ether..." Vortices of air carry momentum and energy, move in straight lines, collide off one another or may join to form a single ring, etc. And in the universal frictionless ether that some physicists at the turn of the century hypothesized, vortex rings would last indefinitely. "Such a conception makes atoms of matter a form of motion of the ether." (pp. 28-32) |