Is The New Science Nonsense?

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1921, Page 4

Is The New Science Nonsense?

tßy Sir William Beach Thomas). ’K.DINBUBGII, Sept. Hi The arch-priest of the new science, which professes to know just how matter is made up, is Mr Langmuir, who lias come over from the United States to Kdinbnt gli to tell us all about the atom. Probably no speech at any British Association meeting was ever listened to by a larger public with mouths of astonishment held more widely open than on the occasion of his recent discourse on the electron. The cha Mil of his personality and the candid precision of his oratory had something to do with this, lint the subject more. Since Professor Rutherford. one oi the pioneer-discoverers, rediscovered the atom at Cambridge (he world has been agog to know what it all means and what difference it will make.

Some of the older men, especially the chemists, are frankly sceptical. 1 hev point out that these so-called electrons i supposed to ho grouped round an infinitesimal centre of electricity in exact patterns and in exactly calculable numbers) are no bigger than one-mil-lionth of the millionth of a centimetre, hopelessly beyond tlu* reach of the most |Miwcrful microscope imaginable. 1 hey say that the theory is half imagination, hut tressed by successive postulates and theories, and that workers in science had much better go to work on tilings which they can tost and touch anil sec. They ask what has happened to this age when men of science launch mu like any mad poet into wild imaginations where no ordinary mortal mav follow them.

11l science have united I boil imaginations and piohaldy gone into oxi'os-u-'. The great Swede, M. Arrhenius himself twitted Mr l.augmuir with “exceeding the speed limit” and M. .1. ■ Ihompsuli, himself one of the disi overers, seemed to feni t lint the siienlihe rovo--lii I iona i irs weie going too last. But when all is said the laet remains that Professor lint hoiToid made as real a discovery as Mine. Curie, who set. the hall tolling : and that Mi I .angmuii’s additions arc helping workers to prophesy results Willi .111 accuracy that could not issue fiolu a t a l-i' tliooiy. The new ilicius (".plains satisfactorily very many of the facts that have been discovered dining the last 10!) years about the constitution and licliaviour of the elements and enables more successful cxjM'rimcnts to lx* made. One may say that, tbere is no lunger any reasonilile doubt that matter is composed of little whorls of electricity placed in various orders. The elements are probable not ehemieallv different in the old sense. but may change and he changed by a ineic breaking down nt ihc “electrical hits” of which .they arc oomposei 1. NY fust knew this in the

case of radium. We now know it of other elements and suspect it of all. The truth is being tested in every other physical laboratory in the world, especially in America and England, and a sort of cleat ing-lioii<e is about to ho arranged where the men of science of all the nations may gig in touch as to; the latest work done on any clement. j Never was such a lute and ci v in the world of .science.