ATOMIC ENERGY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 31, 6 August 1923, Page 4

ATOMIC ENERGY

MODERN SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS

TO WHAT USE COULD IT BE PUT?

The hint which has been often given of late that it may be possible some day to utilise the vast store of energy locked up in the internal constitution of the aloni of mutter has aroused a good deal of—probably "premature—interest, for at present no one knows' how to y*t at anything beyond th e small amount which some atoms themselves dispense in a leisurely manner. A Tovertlink'Ss, writes Sir Oliver Lodge m the " Daily Mail." the electrical theory of matter, as well as certain facts ot observation, shows that the energy is there; and further shows that if we ever became able to build atoms up we might bo able to get at a small fraction of it But however small- the fraction, even if it. were only one-part in a million, the amount thus accessible would be extraordinarily great. We have only recently been taught by Sir Ernest Eutherford how to knock an atom to pieces. A few years ago that seemed impossible, though it was known that atoms sometimes fired off particles spontaneously. But knocking an atom to pieces can hardly be said to liberate its energy. A certain amount ot energy js required to do it. We have to look rather to the inverse process—the building 'up of a complex atom from a simpler one in order to obtain a supply of energy; and that building-up no one has yet learnt now to do.

To take the simplest example of all. It is pretty well known now, from Aston s researches, that atoms are built up of hydrogen, or, at any rate, o£ liydrogen and helium, speaking rather roughly; and that, accordingly, the weight of every atom is a multiple of the weight of the hydrogen atom—as i'rout long ago surmised. But the multiple, though very nearly a.i integer, is not an exact integer. When hydrogen atoms are packed together tightly, so as to form a compound atom, they lose a little in weight; they seem to fall from LOO 7to 1. That is to say, they lose seven parts in a thousand merely by being packed closely totgether.

. Tho electrical theory of matter shows why this should happen, though it would take rather long to explain. And the theory of relativity strongly makes the suggestion that directly matter disappears energy reappears. Or, in other words —not quite orthodox words—that matter is an energetic arrangement in the ether of- space; that there is a large amount of intrinsic etheral energy in its constitution—indeed, that it is composed of nothing else. Consequently we 'may expect in some way or other not yet by any means worked out, energy of ether, on the one hand, and ordinary matter on the otljer, are interchangeable; and that if we could pack hydrogen atoms closely together, let us say four of them, so as to make an atom of helium, every one of them would have lost seven parts in a thousand of its mass of inertia, and that a corresponding amount of encli'v would be liberated.

But why should that energy be fo great? That is because the velocity of light is involved. A mare fragment of a grain of matter moving with the .speed of light would have terrific energy and everything points to the belief that the ether which lias been somehow modified mto matter is so modified because it is circulating with the velocity of light. So jlaiiy - p.or.tjpn_,of i .matter goes out of its ordinary 'material' existence, we may expect the corresponding amount of energy to make its appearance. ■ • • ■ The problem is how to do it—thatl'-is, how to cause the.transformation lo occur; and it seems likely to remain a problem for a goad time ahead. The whole subject in its present early stage is hardly suited to the columns of a newspaper. But as I -Jiave'bceii asked to express in a f.sv/ words the kind of notions which underlie tlio idea—lh 0 outcome of brilliant laboratory experimenting in our own time in the Cavendish and other famous laboratories of llm world—the above may give some idea of what had hotter'remain for the present secluded m. the recesses o£ the scientific brain.