RADIUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 173, 24 July 1903, Page 4

RADIUM.

A MABYELLOTJS ELEMENT.

A cablegram to the New York Sun from London dated June the 20tb, gay a:—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 newlydiscovered substance called radium, Professor Sir William Orookts, recently in Berlin, and Professors Lodge and Uurrie, this week in TxmdoD, have cor-fidently 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 spac?. 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 e-ich substance depends upon the number of such ions contained in each atom. Thus 11,200 ions in each atom produce what is known as oxygen, and 137,200 of the same ionß, if combined in a- single atom, would yield gold. The nature of these ions is, for lack of a batter word, electrical. In other words electricity and matter are one and the same thing. Professor Lodge and his associates believe that matter is not stable in itß atoms, as was heretofore supposed. Thus water may be separated in oxygen and hydrogeD, but it was never before supposed that atoms themselves were capable of disintegration. Professor Ourrie, in some experiments at the Royal Ins'.i'utioo, showed that radium spontaneously and continually disengaged heat and gave off an emanation similar to itself in constant and even violent stream 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. Chemistry has, in fact, become the astronomy of the infinitesimal. The world is clearly on the verge of the greatest revelation which science has yet givan. American scientists have been following up the English professors in the study of radium, finding it present in water in America. The developments suggest I the practical value of radio-activity, J and it is stated as already certain that radio-aclivity 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 will be distanced if the new force can be put to tbe practical uses of the commercial world, which none who have witnessed the experiments already conducted cm doubt, will eventually be accomplished.