FRENCH SCIENTISTS SCEPTICAL.

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 150, 22 December 1921, Page 7

FRENCH SCIENTISTS SCEPTICAL.

(AUSTRALIAN • VtW lIALAND CABL* ASSOCIATION.) s PARIS) 20th' December.

i French scientists are sceptical regarding the German claim of the making of synthetic gold, also the report that Mr. Edison is on the eve of discovering a method of transforming lead into gold. M. Chatelier, the well-known scientist, in an interview, said the reports of the German discovery were a typical swindle in order to trick Germany's creditors.

The reported statement that Professor Irvine Fisher had "sweated as. a serious possibility that German 'chemistry may devise a method of manufacturing gold in the laboratory for tlio payment of her indemnities," was referred by an Auckland Star interviewer to Professor F. P. Worley, of Auckland University. Professor Worley. speaking as! a laboratory chemist, was frankly sceptical about the statement attributed to Professor Fisher ever having been put forward seriously by him, .except perha.ps as one of the very Temote possibilities of'the economical position. Professor Worley'a personal opinion was that the synthetic production of gold , was a' remote possibility, but not a probability, and no chemist would attacli any importance to an uncorroborated statement of the nature attributed to tha American economist. In the cases of radium and radio-active substances, he said, chemists were enabled to find a low rate of transformation, and, in all the observed cases the transformation was in the reverse^'direction to that suggested by the cable under notice, the probability being that of the transmutation of tho nobler metals into base metals if there'was any transmutation at all. It was only within recent years, since the' discovery of radio-active substances, that there had been any recognition of any one element changing into another. In the case of radio-active elements tho final product was lead, and a by-product was helium. These were the only recognised products of transmutation. If the making of synthetic gold were at all possible it would probably be only at such a cost as to make'it hopeless as a, commercial proposition.