e zero all
matter will have the form which we term solid; and, moreover, a degree
of solidity, of tenacity and compactness greater than ever otherwise
attained. All chemical activity will presumably have ceased, and any
existing compound will retain unaltered its chemical composition so
long as absolute zero pertains; though in many, if not in all cases,
the tangible properties of the substance--its color, for example, and
perhaps its crystalline texture--will be so altered as to be no longer
recognizable by ordinary standards, any more than one would ordinarily
recognize a mass of snowlike crystals as air.

It has, indeed, been suggested that at absolute zero all matter may take
the form of an impalpable powder, the forces of cohesion being destroyed
with the vibrations of heat. But experiment seems to give no warrant to
this forecast, since cohesion seems to increase exactly in proportion
to the decrease of the heat-vibrations. The solidity of the meteorites
which come to the earth out of the depths of space, where something
approaching the zero temperature is supposed to prevail, also
contradicts this assumption. Still less warrant is there for a visionary
forecast at one time entertained that at absolute zero matter will
utterly disappear. This idea was suggested by the observation, which
first gave a clew to the existence of the absolute zero, that a gas at
ordinary temperatures and at uniform pressure contracts by 1-27 2d of
its own bulk with each successive degree of lowered temperature. If this
law held true for all temperatures, the gas would apparently contract to
nothingness when the last degree of temperature was reached, or at least
to a bulk so insignificant that it would be inappreciable by standards
of sense. But it was soon found by the low-temperature experimenters
that the law does not hold exactly at extreme temperatures, nor does it
apply at all to the rate of contraction which the substance shows after
it assumes the liquid and solid conditions. So the conception of the
disappearance of matter at zero falls quite to the ground.

But one cannot answer with so much confidence the suggestion that at
zero matter may take on properties hitherto quite unknown, and making
it, perhaps, differ as much from the conventional solid as the solid
differs from the liquid, or this from the gas. The form of vibration
which produces the phenomena of temperature has, clearly, a determining
share in the disposal of m