SUSPENDED LIFE

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2248, 7 September 1914, Page 2

SUSPENDED LIFE

EXISTENCE AFTER MILLIONS 01? YEARS. 1 After many millions of years, when the light and heat of the sun are exhausted, when the earth has beoomo as cold ana void as the moon, according to M. Paul Becquerel, Professor of Practical Botany at Paris University, latent life will still exist on the earth, capable of bursting again into activity under proper conditions. Professor Becquerel, in a recent article in tho "Matin, summarised in "The Times," gives an account of experiments which have conjured up a vision of suspended life. Earlier experiments by MM. Maquenno and Becquerel woro 'questioned by men of science, who declared that life hid simply been diminished and that it was difficult to distinguish between nothiag and little. M. Becquorel determined to prove his results by other means. In the laboratory by Professor Kasmerluigh Oitnes ho subjected dried and stripped seeds of mustard, lucerne, wheat, and spons of asparagus, and .various ' bacteria in vacuum tubes to the temperature of liquid air (— 190, C.) for three weeks, and subsequently for 77 hours to the temperature of liquid hydrogen ( —, 250 O.). Tho seeds alter one year and the spores after two years in a vacuum sprouted vigorously when sown. M. Becquerel concludes that experimentally it is possible to suspend life for a period to which no limit can be set. Discussing the effect of the-experiments, JJ. Becquerel points out that they first of all call in question the Rreat principle of continuity, according to which life is nothing but a series of uninterrupted phenomena to which the slightest check is death. Ho points out that. in future, by adopting his method, it will perhaps bo possible to keep the germs of certain forms of vegetable life in a state of suspended animation for many centuries.