SCIENCE CONGRESS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 13 September 1924, Page 13

SCIENCE CONGRESS.

OPENED IN ADELAIDE

DISTINGUISHED GATHERING,

SYDNEY, Aug. 27. Ifle congress of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, which has opened in Adelaide, a +a <^l ! aWn ..together a distinguished gathering of men of science, including one of the greatest brains that Australia, has produced—Professor Grafton Elliot Smith, now of the chair of anatomy at the London University, and accepted as the greatest liviuoauthority on . Egyptology. Professor Smith is a native of New South Wales and comes of a distinguished family’ his brother, Mr S. H. Smith, being the Director of Education in New South Wales. * The opening addresses at the congress give promise of some important discussions and papers upon pi o blems of the day. In assuming the presidency, Sir John Monash, who rose to the command of the Australian oversea forces during the war, and who has since engineered the great Morwell electricity scheme in Victoria—the greatest undertaking of its kind in Australia, and relying for its source of supply upon the rich deposits of brown coal found in that State—dealt in a masterly manner with the problem of the future supply of power throughout the world. Naturally, he dealt in particular with Australia, and emphasised the unwisdom of looking entirely to water sources for the generation of the immense quantities of power that would be required for the population of r Commonwealth. He showed how a lenable estimate of the potential water power of the world had revealed that it did not exceed 500,000,000 horsepower, or about one-third of one horsepower per head of the world’s present population, and how Australia’s share ot this, excluding Tasmania, had been assessed at not more than LUUOjUOO horse-power, which, with the present population of roundly 6,000,UOO, gave a result which was about naif of the average water horse-power per capita of the world’s available supply. Australia, he said, must look principally to fuel resources in. order to meet the all-important demands for energy that were developing. There were very definite limitations to which the potential energy of the rain and snowfall upon the highlands could be harnessed, either at all, or at such a reasonable cost that the resulting energy .could , compete commercially against fuel supply. These limitations were especially severe in continental Australia, Our continental stream flow conditions bore no analogy to the Great Lakes scheme in Tasmania or to the extensive hydraulic resources of New Zealand, or to the huge hydro schemes associated with the falls of Niagara., that, was why the energetic advocacy by a section of country interests of the development of hydro-electric schemes in Victoria m preference to heat power stations, based upon the State’s very extensive brown coal deposits, were doomed to failure. Sir John MoiiXh £ rr £ll °H th !i disappointing results that had attended efforts to produce e ectncßy economicaHy by the utilisation of the power of the tides. The problem he pointed out, involved not of apparatus which would utilise the potential energy of tidal waters so as to produce mechanical, motion, but also the provision of extensive_ works to impound the high waters That, on investigation, proved so costly that under modern conditions of power generation by other available means there seemed little hope of anv ucf a L C rr m J e - r i Cial advantage for the use of the tides.