RADIO-COBALT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 January 1939, Page 6

RADIO-COBALT

GIFT SAMPLE FROM U.S.A.

AN APPRECIATED COURTESY. AID IN TREATING STOCK DISEASES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Illustrating once more the great courtesy of American scientists and their spirit of international co-operation, a gift of sample of radio-cobalt has been received by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research from the United States for animal health experiments. It is known that in some parts of New Zealand the administration of extremely small quantities of cobalt will prevent the onset of diseases of the bush sickness type in sheep. Radia-cobalt is an example of the artificial transmutation of matter dreamed of by the alchemists of old and achieved by scientists during the last few years. It has all the chemical properties of the metal cobalt, from which it is indistinguishable by any known chemical methods.. Yet it was produced from iron—a chemical element with entirely different properties —by bombarding iron with certain rays of a high-voltage electrical machine called a cyclotron. Such transmutations were first produced by Lord Rutherford, who, however, effected the transmution of matter by radiations from radium and until just before his death lacked the expensive, equipment to effect transmutation on a larger scale. Incidentally, it has been found impossible to produce gold from platinum by these machines, though the process at present is uneconomic.