GOLD FROM MERCURY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 307, 27 December 1924, Page 5

GOLD FROM MERCURY.

NOT YET A COMMERCIAL PROPOSITION.

The report of a German professor that he has obtained a microscopic quantity of gold by subjecting mercury vapour for a long period to (he action of a powerful electrical current is one more indication that the dreams of the alchemist arc being realised by modern science. There is nothing improbable in the report. That famous British physicist, Sir Ernest Rutherford, has already disrupted numerous elements, among them nitrogen, boron, fluorine, and soTiurn. Moreover, as most people no.v know, parium is perpetually disrupting itself, and passing, with the. loss of certain particles, into lead, by a process which all man's knowledge cannot affect or influence. That the transmutation of mercury into gold can have any practical or commercial value is not probable in the present or immediate future (says the London "Daily Mail"). The cost of transmuting the base metal into the fine metal is enormous. To make mercury into gold, an alphaparticle has to be forced out of the atom of mercury, and a relatively giu'aritic energy lias to be employed, go i that it would probably cost £IQO, or perhaps even £1000, to manufacture by this process an ounce of gold, which could be extracted from existing ores in the earth for something less than £4. There are many other substances which can be manufactured artificially ■by the chemist at a much greater cost than is involved when they are obtained in other ways. Thus, synthetic rubber was ma-dc in Germany during the war, but at an outlay of 18/ to 25/ the pound: chemically "it was identical with naturallygrown rubber, but it was too expensive, and it lacked certain of the essential qualities in the natural product.