WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12820, 15 August 1939, Page 2

WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

‘‘93” In the whole vast universe there is no “Stop” signal. We are never able to come up against a point where we read, “Thus far and no farther.” Often in our ignorance and simplicity we imagine that we have -reached the limit, but it invariably proves to he a Thus, for example, the older chemists—of the last half of last century, say—had chemistry put into a narrow box and. locked there. They'said: “There are 92 elements. Amen. But they were wrong. Their vision of matter was that when you break it down and come to its -components you find atoms as hard and solid as minute billiard balls, and that each of the 92 ele-‘ ments was made up of a certain arrangement of these atoms. The theory worked for a time, but long before the century was out scientists were discovering that things were not so simple. Electrons were found, and then protons cafiie into view, and the ultimate nature of matter was found to be far more wonderful than had been imagined at first. ■

Now—-in quite recent years—a young Italian physicist (Enrico Fermi) has shattered all the old notions by doing what everybody thought impossible. He has added a new element to the 92. At present it is usually known as “9 3.” He has taken the uranium, the heaviest of all, and has attacked it by radio-activity till he has suceeded in isolating a new element more complex than uranium itself. The new element is, naturally, radio-ac-tive, and has what is known as a half-life of 13 minutes. This means that the period the element lakes to break down is such that half the process is finished in 13 minutes just as we say that radium is reduced to half its original mass in 1800 to 200 0 years, and thorium in about 22,00 0 “93” is evidently very quick if its radio-activity is such that half its particles are shot out in a few days.