AGE OF THE EARTH

Hokitika Guardian, 11 May 1922, Page 4

AGE OF THE EARTH

'Silt E. RrTHftp.EbltD’S LECTURES.' I;&fctiON,toare 21. Refcjie the discovery of rndjo-activc miit'erials scientists were content with estiinathig tfie age of the earth at a few iiundred milJion years, more or

less. Geologists were wont to claim I sit fdax't five huiidreil millions, so as to allow time fot- the geological j changes that lmvb obviously taken place j ifi what is termed the lithosphere, or rocky crust of the earth. H ith the ] discovery of radio-active matter there came an altered poffit of view. Forth- , with it hecanie evident that the earth mfist lie vastly older than even the hoary hge demanded by the geologists. Tn his last lecture at the "Roy ill Institution on “Ttadio-activity” Professor Sir E. Rutherford claimed that the “life of radiutu was at least five thousand millions of years, and that uranium, the parent of most radio-active substances, must he no loss than twice that age, otherwise there would lie no uranium left on the earth. Sir Finest, however, was not chiefly coneernI ed with matters affecting chronology. ITis concent was rather to explain some 1 of the properties and characteristics ol 1 ironium, radium, thorium, actinium, and ' other radio-active minerals, and the 1 remarkable products or emanations to which these give rise. A noteworthy ' fact which lie demonstrated by a series ■ of beautiful experiments, was that ’ these emanations, or gases, possessed in ? varying degree the same physical ami s therapeutic properties, as the minerals . front which they are derived. One un- - portant result of this, especially in rev hition to the treatment of disease, is I that radium is comparatively little used - directly in hospital work. What is done is to collect the emanations in minute tubes, and apply these in medical troatt 'incut. They are quite its effective as the actual mineral itself, and there is d the advantage that if a tube ol radioo active emanation gets broken or dise appears:, no radium is lost, and a tresh - supplv of the radio-active emanation t ecu he “grown” and eolleeted in a fresh tube in a Tew days. e Thme is an astonishing variahilily m tie duration of these emanations. A e pioee ol radium itself will, it is cstiII mated, go on pouring out its products t t,u live thousand million years, while e or.e of the products of actinium, ‘‘actinium A" as it is called, disappears in S the five-hundredth part of a second, s Yet, so min vellotis is the refinement of v laboratory methods now practised that e it |i;is Iron found possible to determine accurately the p!ivsieal properties ol \ this rapidly lleeting emanation. Thirty or more elements are produced irom radium. and in watching the transforv mations which go on under their eves n scientific investigators see taking place y that transforniation of metals so long and vainly sought by the mediaeval i- alchemists. Jt is in this direction that pei Imps the most momentous diseovcii- ies will he made in connexion with e radio-activity. The disruption of the t atom which is continually going on in ;- radio-active substances may, and probo ably will, provide the key to the soln- - tion of the problem of the constitution ’ of matter, and incidentally place at the r disposal of mankind illimitable stores a of the energy which is now obtained by - the wasteful consumption of coal or the utilisation of water power.