RARE GASES.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 May 1926, Page 4

RARE GASES.

HELIUM 500. MILLION YEARS OLD. LONDON, April 2. ■Sir Ernest 'Rutherford is delivering before the Boyal Institution, a series of four lectures ori “The Hare Gases of the Atmosphere.” At the first discourse on Saturday, the distinguished scientiesb introduced a, number of experiments. He concluded by liberating helium gas, which lie estimated had lain imprisoned in a radio-active mineral for a period of Jive'llundred million years, and made to manifest its existence L/ the passage through it of an ciectrie discharge, giving plainly and unmistakably the brilliant yellow colour which the French astronomer, Janssen, first saw in 1868, during the observation of an eclipse in India.

Sir Ernest said it was due to those great pioneers, Lord Rayleigh and Sir Wililam Ramsay, that a new and unsuspected group of gases were di.scored, and their work was one of ihe greatest tri uni pi is of British science. The gases, now known by the names of argon, neon, helium, krypton and xenon, were characterised by one definite (hemieal property, or absence of it, inasmuch as they wore all chemically inert, and refused to combine with one another or with other elements in the atmosphere. It was ream cable that some of these gases, which the pioneers obtained with difficulty. and in such small quantities should now bo produced on so large a (.calc, and should have found numerous industrial applications. To-day, it had been estimated, about a hundred million litres of argon were produced annualy throughout the world, and most of this was used for gasfillod electric lights. Neon was also produced in considerable quantities for discharge tubes used in illuminated advertisements. They . saw evidence of this gas, whenever they passed at night through Piccadilly Circus. Helium had been found in quantity in natural gases both in Canada and in the United States. Sufficient of it had been obtaiend from these sources to fill an airship. Noteworthy as were the many industrial use to which those rare gases had been put, said Sir Ernest, they represented the corner-stone of our ideas and conceptions of the structure of atoms, and in a multiplicity of directions the advance of science had been influenced by their discovery. The importance of helium to science it was difficult to exaggerate. Ramsay’s detection of its’ existence in certain radio-active minerals the lecturer descrilx?d ns “one of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of science.” By its aid there had been opened up a new region of research where the properties of matter could he examined at such a low temperature that the movements of the atoms and molecules had almost ceased. The flying atoms of lreli uni liberated from radium by its spontaneous disintegration had proved an invaluable aid in determining the structure of atoms. A DRAMATIC STORY.

The (1 iscoverv of argon had as its immediate result the discovery of helium by Hnmsnv, the full story of which was one of the most dramatic in the history of science. The French astronomers Janssen, first saw the lines of its spectrum in the chromosphere during an eclipse in India in 1808, and shortly afterwards 1 .ockyer concluded that these must he due to an unknown gas present, in the sun. Shortly after the discovery of argon. Sir Henry Miorx. who was then working in the British Museum, wrote to Ramsay, drawing his attention to an observation made by Tlillehrand in Washington to tin l effect that olevite gave ml a quantity of gas which he t l ' might ho nitrogen or possibly argon. Ramsay did not let the grass grow under his feet, but bought some e’evite the same day, and during the afternoon found in- the gas derived from it ihe characteristic yellow lino of helium, a discovery that was shortly afterwards confirmed by Crookes.