{"id":866,"date":"2011-02-19T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info-libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=866"},"modified":"2023-07-07T18:29:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T18:29:31","slug":"1904","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/02\/19\/1904\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 44 – 1904: Rayons “N” : Recueil des Communications Faites \u00e0 l\u2019Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences by Ren\u00e9 Blondlot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published: Paris, 1904\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In science, the appearance of success can be illusory, and what seems to be a startling achievement may end in embarrassment. Such is the sad case of the N-ray, a particle \u201cdiscovered\u201d in 1903 by Ren\u00e9 Blondlot, a distinguished French physicist. Blondlot (1849-1930) published this book as well as 23 separate articles on his exciting discovery. At the time, X-rays were still a fairly recent phenomenon, having been detected and named by Wilhelm R\u00f6ntgen in 1895 \u2014 an achievement that earned R\u00f6ntgen the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. There was glory in the discovery of new rays, and Blondlot was determined to find some.<\/p>\n

But what were N-rays? Blondlot argued that they were a new type of electromagnetic radiation. Among the alleged sources of N-rays were X-ray tubes, heated sheet iron, and the sun. N-rays could be detected by using a flame of gas from a small orifice, in conjunction with a ground-glass plate to observe the reflection, and with surfaces covered with a calcium sulfide deposit film. Blondlot also claimed that N-rays could be stored in materials such as traversed platinum. Another French scientist, Augustin Charpentier, thought that N-rays were emitted from the human body, even after death. Numerous researchers began writing about N-rays, and nearly 300 articles were published on the topic by 1906.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Some scientists were unconvinced by Blondlot\u2019s arguments, however, and many could not detect the rays when duplicating his experiments. In 1904, the same year this book was published, the American scientist (and one-time MIT researcher) Robert W. Wood (1868-1955) traveled to Blondlot\u2019s lab in France to see for himself the truth of Blondlot\u2019s claims. During one trial, Wood took a necessary piece of the experimental equipment and put it in his pocket, without Blondlot\u2019s knowledge, in order to debunk Blondlot\u2019s findings. Even without the prism that was crucial to the experiment, Blondlot still claimed to have observed N-rays. With that, he was in effect exposing his own folly. Wood published his findings in the September 1904 issue of Nature<\/em>, discrediting Blondlot and ending science\u2019s affair with the N-ray.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blondlot had used photographic evidence to support his claims. As shown in these images, he tried to demonstrate that photographs of light sources exposed to N-rays would produce a darker negative than those not exposed to N-rays. Later detractors found evidence that differences among the photographs were caused by inconsistencies in photographic emulsions, exposure time, and development of the film.<\/p>\n

Blondlot\u2019s story provides an object lesson in the need for scrupulous control of variables when conducting scientific experiments. Moral: don\u2019t let N-rays happen to you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: Paris, 1904 In science, the appearance of success can be illusory, and what seems to be a startling achievement may end in embarrassment. Such is the sad case of the N-ray, a particle \u201cdiscovered\u201d in 1903 by Ren\u00e9 Blondlot, a distinguished French physicist. Blondlot (1849-1930) published this book as well as 23 separate articles on his exciting discovery. At the time, X-rays were still a fairly recent phenomenon, having been detected and named by Wilhelm R\u00f6ntgen in 1895 \u2014 an achievement that earned R\u00f6ntgen the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. There was glory in the discovery of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4255,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/4255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}