A MARVELLOUS ELEMENT.

Motueka Star, Volume IV, Issue 199, 17 July 1903, Page 5

A MARVELLOUS ELEMENT.

San Francisco, June 25. A cablegram to tin? “New York Sun” from London dated Jane 20th, says : The World’s foremost searchers after the ultimate secrets of* the universe have at length committed themselves to a theory which has been long foreshadowed, and now is apparently substantiated by the study of a newly-discovered substance called radium. Professor Sir William Crookes, recently in Berlin, and Professors Lodge and Currie, this week in London, have confidently proclaimed that it is easy to define this great revolution of science in scarcely more than a sentence. To comprehend it, however, is almost as far beyond the power of the human mind as the ideal of eternity or infinite space. The old theory that atoms of elements consist of indivisible units of matter has been definitely discarded, and instead it now appears that each atom is a whole stellar system of infinitely smaller, but absolutely identical, units. all in orbital motion. The hydrogen atom consists of seven hundred such atoms, or ions. The nature or identity of each substance depends upon the number of such ions contained in each atom. Thus it,200 ious in each atom produce what is known as oxygen, and 137,200 of the same ions, if combined in a single atom, would yield gold. The nature of these ions is, for lack "of a better word, electrical. In other words •electricity and matter are one and the same tiling. Professor Lodge and his associates believe that matter is not stable in its atoms, as was heretofore supposed. Thus water may be separated in oxygen and hydrogen, but it was never before supposed that atoms themselves were capable of disintegration. Professor Currie, in experiments last night at the Royal Institution, showed that radium spontaneously and continually disengaged heat and gave off an emanation similar to itself in constant and even violent steam or radiations. Professor Lodge surmises that the process of disintegration of atoms may constitute the evolution of chemical elements. The whole theory is, in fact, an astronomical one: Cnemistry has, in iact, become he astronomy of the infinitesimal. The tvvorld is clearly on the verge of the greatest revelatiod'lwh'ich science has yet given. American scientists have been following up the Engpsh professors in the study of radium, finding dt present in water in America. The developments suggest the practical value of radio-activity and it is stated as already certain that radio-activity will take the place of X rays in photography, A force that never wastes and always produces, is, in effect, perpetual motion and steam and electricity both w ; il be distanced if the new force can be put to the practical uses of the commercial world, vvaich none who have witnessed fhe experiments already conducted can doubt will eventually be accomplished.