RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 268, 10 August 1945, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

(By Kickshaws.) The way those high treason trials are going in France, Hitler’s case would be that if he hadn't knocked out France she couldn’t have been saved. * * * A bird expert says it is a mystery why sub-tropical wax eyes nest on cold alpine mountains. Maybe it’s just to get their young used to the shortage of fuel. It was stated that scientists making the first test on the new atom bomb were frightened lest the action would spread to all the atoms in the vicinity, eventually destroying the world. Just as once one lights a piece of paper the flame will provide sufficient energy to consume everything in its. vicinity, so once atoms are upset their neighbours may also catch the infection. As everything in the world is but a complicated pattern of atoms this means. that all matter is endangered. There is a definite danger that man may find some key which, when the door is unlocked, blows everything to bits. Nevertheless the Intelligence that designed the Universe and. all that is in it took care to make it as stable as possible. . Atoms are not the ultimate building brick, as they are composed of smaller particles revolving round a heavy centre at enormous speeds. In fact speed seems necessary to their existence. The whole thing is cemented together by electrical forces of attraction, just) as gravitation cements .the solar systems. Efforts to measure the strength of this atomic'cement are put at a billion billion billion billion times that of gravity. A billion here is taken as a million times a million. It is clear, therefore, that the Great Intelligence was aware of the danger of inqmsive intelligences of a lower order meddling with Nature’s building bricks. All that yas possible was done to make those bricks pretty firm. It would seem nevertheless that we are on the fringes of being able to unstick those atomic forces.

Nations with readily available supplies of uranium appear to be destined to rank in significance with those nations which, when steam was invented, had large supplies of coal. It would thus seem that a new fuel age has. dawned. Compared with the coal age, it is an age where man will be positively sursounded by surplus energy. The special type of uranium, U 235, produces energy merely by placing it in water. In '* GW of the fact that U 235 produces over five million times more energy than an equal volume of coal, the new fuel age’makes the coal age seem just a childish curtainraiser. One may certainly say that but for the war this new discovery could never have reached such an advanced stage. Scientists had the facts at their finger-tips, but not the money to make the gadgets to produce from uranium large supplies of U 235. Until recently the best-known method of producing U 235 was so slow it was estimated it would take 12,000,000 years to extract a weight of one pound. Even The most philosophic person hardly wants to wait that time to see theory bear fruit. It was known that it would require mi lions of pounds to speed things up. Well, the war provided the millions of pounds. Indeed, before the present war there were no backers for the idea, lor example. Professor Wilhelm Krasny-Lrgen, ot the Wenner-Grens Institute, Stockholm declared some years ago that if he could find five million pounds he could make 21b. of U 235 in a week. The war has found the money, and. it. would seem more than that quantity is now beimproduced.

In view of the fact that U 235 does its work best in water it would seem that if the 81b. of the stuff .used in that atomic bomb were dropped in a harbour it would cause considerable commotion. Indeed it is probable that 81b. of the stuff dropped into Wellington Harbour would be sufficient to raise the shallower water to boiling point. 'This is especially probable because the effects tend to spread readily in water, producing reactions until there was no more water to consume in the vicinity. It would thus seem that naval actions may eventually ceas ®’ b ®j cause enemy ships could be boiled out of existence. Indeed, the more one examines the potentialities of tlie new source of energy the more incredible it all seems. Yet one must assume that these first efforts are as inefficient as were mans first efforts to produce an engine which would work by steam power. In fact the limit of power in the idea may well be that point at which the efficiency reaches a stage where chain-action en dangers the structure of the whole world. No doubt all manner of laws and inter national codes will have to b e b mlt UP to ensure that man does not blow himseit anj his world to pieces. Such power' over the secrets of Nature must indeed make even the gods feel jealous.

President Truman has revealed that the atomic bomb works on a principle similar V that used in . the. « energy in the sun. Ow e to nf the centre of the sun, some 20,000,009 decrees or more, atomic bombardment takes place which alters the constitution M This ends with the producUon of helium, a small quantity of carbtm and a great, deal of energy. The sun, however, has discovered how to th c trol its atomic reactions, so that tuc ener"v is released gradually and not all at once. Thc conditions which promote this action in the sun involve a temnerature of 20,000,000 centigrade and a pressure of 15,1)00,000,000 pounds to the square inch. The sun divides, up the process into various stages ranging from a second or so to several million J ears. The first process requires au interval of 10 minutes. Various electrons are shot about, and a gamma ray. or _ so is radiated. The next interval is 00.000 years. The sun gets busy on the ,.P!'°s° nS T l { 1 “ t more gamma rays are radiated. done a 4,000,000-year interval is required. More protons are disposed of before introducing an interval of two V” Oxvgen gets shot up and converted into a special form of nitrogen. The next interval is 20 years, when nitrogen of mass 15 mates with a hydrogen nucleus to produce carbon of mass 1~. After interval of 2,500,000 years the whole cycle starts again. It will be seen, therefore, that the sun somewhat wisely takes its time with suitable rest periods. » * « Even in the sun there is a danger that the release of atomic energy may get out of control. It is well known that nearly all thc observed suns show signs of instability. Some in fact have overdone this atomic bqmb business aud blown up. It would seem that this is the normal fate of every young sun. After the blowup, suns are never the same again. Astronomers declare that our own sun has reached an age when it may overdo his atomic energy stunt and ■ blow up like others have done. That of course (P c ’ ln ® that an atomic bomb bigger and better than anything man has produced wiJ destroy the planets including our world. Nevertheless this event, although dated at any moment, is on a chronological scale more grandiose than even geological time scales. “Anytime” means probably in about a hundred million years or more. It would thus seem that we shall not be bothered with our sun taking a hand in the new game of atomic bombing. The sun docs its stuff by intense temperatures. Man does his by speeding atomic particles, so that they smack atoms to bits. This speeding up is usually attained by using cleetrieill attraction. Thc higher the electrical voltage the greater thc attraction and thus the speed. That is why atom splitting experiments utilize machines, like the one depicted on the cable page yesterday. 'When man is aide to use atomic energy efficiently one drop of water will he able to supply 200 horsepower for one J ear. A tea cup will provide sufficient fuel for a generating station for. a year. Actually when we talk about using the power in the atom we refer to the power jvlnch results when the atom and its associated protons, electrons and the like are broken down. Some power, concerning which little is known, binds the whole together. An even greater force which so far has not. been touched keeps the electrons intact. These little bubbles of “less than nothing” contrive to exist by exerting a force of billions of tons. This in<|e £ d opens up entirely new sources of power so great that their liberation may well shatter all matter.'