WORLD'S GREATEST SECRET.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 August 1920, Page 10

WORLD'S GREATEST SECRET.

• COMING OF A NEW AGE. THE WONDER OF THE ATOM. To a weary and sorely-tried world, sadly oppressed and afflicted by social and industrial upheavals and unrest, political turm'oil, and international strife, comes the welcome intelligence that a new force lias been discovered vrhieli is going to solve all the problems of our industrial world, relieve men of their business worries and women of the servant-girl problem, abolish the ravages of war and disease, and even prolong life. This latest sensational scientific development was briefly referred to about six weeks 1 or two months ago in our cable messages, and by the last mail additional particulars .arc supplied by Mr Shaw Desmond in an entrancing ftrticlo in Pearson's Magazine. He explains that all matter is composed of infinitesimal particles called molecules, and these molecules are themselves composed of atoms, and from the atoms comes this now force. The Writer tells us that the force of the atoms comes from exaotly the same thing that gives water its force when turned to steara, Rnd he describes how steam turns tin wheels of a steam engine. It does so because heat splits the water into the molecules of which it, like all matter, is composed which, freed, owing to a law of nature, rush apart or expand. It is the force coming from this explosion of steam which is used to make the wheels go round. This splitting up of matter into molecules has boon carried one stop further. The. molecule has been split into its atoms. These are found to be in a'state of violent vibration, pulsing with restless electric energy, colliding and rushing apart. These atoms rushing apart generate force exactly in the same way as steam. But is is a force many million times greater than steam. Scientists have, through the medium of highly sensitised instruments, observed and measured ail this, and they tell us that, as we have developed and controlled steam, through the steam engine, so we are approaching the invention of the "atomic engine" for the development and application of the new force. Sir Ernest Rutherford, in breaking up the atom itself at will, has made what is. perhaps, the first step towards, the control of the new power. Mr Desmond points out that companies are already being formed for the application of the new power when it reaches controllable form and have bean advertised in the public Press. Inventors are now at work upon the "atomic engine" itself, and its coming will give us full control of the new force.

DAIIiY LIFE REVOLUTIONISED. The coming of this new force will produce many changes in our daily lives. Because the business of the future will be concerned with one thing only—the organisation and distribution of the new force—there will be no business worries. Transport will bo' revolutionised. We shall cease to travel by trains that average thirty miles an hour, or across the in steamers at twelve, when atomic engines are driving aerial freight trains at ,100 miles an hour. These and a hundred other things in life will be changed by the new power. "I have been careful to avoid exaggeration in any form," says Mr Desmond, "but rt seems to me as though the coming of the atomic engine will destroy all economic 'values' as we know them to-day, though is will not, of course, destroy the things behind these values. The Stock Exehanares of the world will be closed in an aec when a universal force, nvnilnhle to all, will have made everything—food, clothes, houses, etc—so cheap that there will be nothing in which to speculate. And, as the whole struggle between Capital and Labour is the problem of buying I and selling man-power, and as this manpower is going to be replaced by atomic power, our politics of to-day will pass into the limbo of forgotten things. There will be no more social unrest. Love alone will be unaffected by the new force. Love is eternal and carries on despite any changes brought about by science. Death will still abide, but by destroying disease through killing the microbe, man's life will bo lengthened, and to him shall be given 'the joy of living.' " EV& POSSIBILITIES, Eminent men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr. Irving Langmuir have commented upon the terrible consequences which would accrue should the secret of this force get into the hands of a dangerous man-—say, the ex-Kaiser. Mr Desmond proves that it: is no exaggeration to say that the ex-TCaiser, sitting in Potsdam, could, by pressing a. button, unloose forcos which would lay civilisation in - the duet. The "atomic bomb" alone could do this. "For,' concludes Mr Desmond, "the atomic bomb has the curious feature of continuing to develop new power over an indefinite period, which is not to assume any more than wo already know of radium, the sparks of which cannot be quenched by any known medium, and which apparently continue to develop energy without ' reduction either of bulk or power." It is reassuring to know that it is English scientists like Sir Ernest Rutherford, Sir J. J. Thompson, and Sir Oliver Lodge, and Americans like Langmuir and Noyes, who at present hold the key to the solution of the "World's Greatest Secret." When the secret is given to the world, the conditions may be* such as will make even war impossible for ever. "No Power or group of Powers will dare-face the 1 terrors of atomic uombs, which will scrap every battleship from the face of the waters or every big gun and fortress from the landscape." It is In this connection that Mr Desmond reveals the fact that before the war ended, experiments in the manufacture of a bomb showing something of the qualities of the atomic bomb had reached an advanced stage. The' tremendous force of the atom will be realised when we remember that Lord Kelvin and Sir Oliver Lodge have told ua that within mattei of any kind, from a piece of wood to a glass'of water, there.is so much energy that within each ounce there reside? enough force to lift the British Navj from the bottom of the sea to the'toj of the world's highest, mountain. B_\ experiments already made it has bcci proved "that the hnlf-millionth of ai ounce of the atoms of the gas hclitiu can develop the same energy as tin .I.lolb shell fired into Paris by 'Bi< Bertha.' "

THE PROBLEM. It may be thought by some flint all those investigations and predictions about the atom are so much speculation, ami that the new force could never be controlled. But it is not so. All authorities are satisfied that no problem confronts them in that connection. They are agreed that the new forces will'he controlled in much the same way as the electric waves of wireless teleirmnhv ill* n«Tif.*nll~l. »Tn.t «J> tO-dftJT

we can send a powerful or weak current through our wireless installations', we shall be able to graduate the power of the atom, controlling its direction and its. intensity." The real problem, according to those who are concerning themselves with the control of the atom, is the danger to society which would result should the great secret be discovered before mankind has been prepared for its reception. Mr Desmond informs us that in America it has been seriously proposed that legislation should be introduced, making it a crime for science to continue its investigations upon the application of the new energy until the time comes when mankind has been capable of a full measure of selfdiscipline. Whatever may be our opinion about the atom as the force of the future, it is certain that wo are about to witness great changes, in the world and in our daily lives. As age has succeeded, age, bringing with them new and wonderful changes, 59 our age (if wo are to credit science) is about'to be replaced by another—the greatest yet known. "As the stone age gave way to that of iron, and man-power to steampower, and that again gave place to electricity, a,s the aeroplane will one day replace the railway train, as the train in its turn replaced the horse—just as the electric telegraph and telephone replaced the messengers—so is the age in which we live about to be replaced by the Age of the Atom, which holds tha workings of the World's Greatest Secret.' "