MIRACLES OF 2029

Evening Star, Issue 20140, 3 April 1929, Page 1

MIRACLES OF 2029

TAPPING NEW ENERGY Will the child of 2021), looking baric on 1021), consider it. as primitive and quaint as IS2O seems to the child of the present day The Fail of Birkenhead predicts marvellous changes among men in the course of an article which he has written in the .February, issue of ‘ Henrst’s International-Cosmo-politan. 1 “ Our means of travel, onr source* of wealth, onr medicine, and even onr ideas will change as drastically during the next century as they did in the course of the last,” he says. “ The. best scientific opinion believes that before 2021) physicists will have solved the problem of supplying the world with limitless amounts of cheap power. At present we derive the energy, which drives the wheels of industry from coal and oil. Both these substances are won from Nature at th» expense of much money and vast stores of muscular energy, nor are their supplies inexhaustible. A pound of coal can only be made, lo yield one horsepower per hour. “Yet locked up in the atoms which constitute a pound of water there is ten million horse-power hours. There is no question that this colossal source of energy exists, hut as yet; physicist* do not know how to realise it; or, haling done so, how much to make it perform useful work. This problem will be solved before 2021). “ For the first time in bistory man will bo armed with sufficient power to undertake operations on a cosmic scale. It will ho open to him radically to undertake operations on a cosmic scale. Alter the geography or the climate of the world.’ By utilising some 150,000 Lons of water, the amount displaced by a large liner, it would be possible to remove Ireland to the deeper portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The beat; obtainable from flic same quantity of water would suffice to maintain tbo Polar regions at the temperature of the Sahara for a thousand years. “ The liberation of this energy naturally will revolutionise travel and. transport. Concerning the nature of the vehicles it is rash to prophesy.' Passengers will travel in enormously swift aeroplanes, which will ascend and descend vertically. Goods will be carried cheaply and rapidly by land or sea, propelled by motors whose fuel bill will be a boost ml,

‘‘ln biology developments may 1m predieted which will change the whola nature of life as wc experience it today. Biologists in 2029 will have learned the secrets of the living chemistry of the human body. Rejuvenation will be an ordinary and well recognised mailer of a few injections at' approximate intervals. “ By 2022, biologists •..■']) .Jso hava si.’:-e-,! some of the mysteries of human heredity. Heredity is determined by certain ‘genes’ or units, minulu bodies, so small that, if a hen’s egg were magnified to tho size of the > world, one of the ‘ genes 5 in it would lie on a. fair-sized dining table. “ Most probably by 2029 a clever young man will consider bis fiancee’s hereditary complexion before proposing marriage; and the young woman of tliab day will refuse him because he has inherited a ‘ gene ’ from his father which will predispose their children to quarrelsomeness.. By intelligent combination oi suitable ‘genes,’ it will ha possible to predict with reasonable certainty that truly brilliant children shall be born ofa marriage.

“ Jt is possible, however, that by 2112'.) the whole question of human heredity and eugenics will be swallowed up by the prospect of ontogenetic birth. By this means. Hie development of a child from a fertilised coil outside its mol hers body—in a glass vessel filled with scrum on a laboratory bench. “The results of much research show that the connection between a mother and her growing child is purely chemical, there is no valid reason why on» day biologists should not be able to imitate perfectly that chemical connection in the laboratory.

“ It is conceivable that not all these changes will have occurred by 2021). The progress of scientific discovery _is chequered, and subject to no ascertainable regularity or period. Halts in progress, however, are comparative and not final.

“ Wo might be disposed to accept calmly these predictions of cheap atomic power on a cosmic scale, and the breeding of offspring by laboratory methods, but the prediction of a possible catastrophe that would destroy civilisation lor a thousand years, and atomic explosion which will involve the world and mince it to a flaring vortex of incandescent gas is a startling one,”'