THE EARTH AS A BOMB.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 2

THE EARTH AS A BOMB.

"We are on the eve of scientific discoveries of so sensational and so farreaching a character as to render Einstein's theory, by comparison, child's play. I predict that within the next five, ten. or at the outside twenty years, man will be able to say 'I have 'harnessed the atom.' The underlying factor in the conquest ot the atom is that remarkable affair, the Quantum Theory. . . This represents the view of one ot the most eminent Oxford scientists. "Einstein," he added, "astonished the world with relativity. The quantum theory promises to revolutionise it. Einstein showed there were kinks in space The quantum theory shows there are gaps—either in time or in time multiplied by energy. It has taught us the vital truth that there is one law for the individial atom, but another for a collection of atoms—commonlv known as matter. "Let lire explain, first, what harnessing the atom means. It is simply the artificial disintegration of the atom in order to utilise the energy stored m it for the practical purposes of life. "The energy stored in such elements as thorium aiid uranium is stupendous In one ton of uranium there is as much potential power as in a million tons ol coal, and it oulv needs the knowledge oi how to ignite it—how to cause the atoms to break up when we desire—to make this power immediately available. "The cost and weight of atomic enorgy would be negligible. One man. would be able to carry, without effort, sufficient fuel to drive a large hnei from Southampton to New York. 1 see no reason why we should not bo flying to the moon before the century is out. i ... . r "The immediately apparent effect ol the release of the atom will probably be the electrification of everything, and I foresee that in the near future we shall be an entirely air-borne population The transmutation ol one metal into another will be a simple matter. i,s will be the production ot new metals, or alloys, of enormous strength. r* is conceivable, too, that such terrific force might eventually be liberated as to blow up the world. "Then consider the possibilities <>> war The first nation to discover the secret will be in a position to wipe out all the other nations, in a quarter ol an hour. It could send over an aeroplane with a 20001b bomb which would have as devastating an effect, as that of a million aeroplanes carrying the 20001b bomb- in use to-day "All atomic bomb, with a force equivalent to the existing 200011* bombs, would weigh almost less than a. nenny postcard. "The question is. winch will that nation be? America is busy endowing vast |aborator ; es. Germany, even before the war. had the great Kaiser Wilhelm Laboratory near Berlin, and there and elsewhere research is now being feverishly speeded up and willingly financed by the great industrial magnates England, however, cheerfully voted £26,000,000 lor elementary education, to teach the community the Latin name for a thigh bone and the number of Henry Ylll.'s wives but when it comes to grunting even DjO,000 to Oxford or Cambridge I Diversity, the Royal Commission alter two whole years 'have barely been able to induce the Government to consider the possibility. "I am not discussing remote, but immediate prospects. What underlies the whole problem in the Quantum Theory, and that we are now working on. "Einstein proved we live, so to speak, in a space distorted like the space behind a convex mirror.' Iho Quantum Theory proves we have a cinematographic existence consisting ot ;, series of discontinuous jumps. We shall have to revise all our existing conceptions of time and space. we shall have to scrap all the laws of physics as accepted from the days ol Newton onwards-for the simple reason that if applied to atomic phenomena thev are not only inadequate, but utterly wrong. They only apply to directly observable phenomena, such as the revolution of the planets round the sun, in which the billions of atoms concerned permit of the law of average coming into opration. As soon as you bring'them to bear on the individual atom, we are now beginning to realise that thev are hopelessly inaccurate. The mere existence of atoms is incompatible with the old laws, and it is only when we have learnt through the Quantum Theory what underlies thenstability that we shall really be able to control and disintegrate fboin.