HELIUM AND HYDROGEN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 107, 2 November 1926, Page 5

HELIUM AND HYDROGEN

AGE OF METEORITES. '

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

-, LONDON, 22nd September. Dr. Fritz Paneth, professor in the Chemi-' cal Institute' of Berlin University, announces the preliminary result of experiments that he has conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kurt Peters, another eminent chemist, in an effort to obtain helium from hydrogen. The two chemists (writes a Berlin correspondent) based their investigations on the fact that by means of a spectroscope the existence of only one-thousand-millionth part of a cubic centimetre can be ascertained, and they tested their methods by ascertaining the amount of helium contained in natural, gas. In the course of their investigations they claim to have found in one of the gas springs 3-10 per cent, of helium. They are also able to calculate by means of their method that the age of a meteorite is 600,000,000 years. The two chemists started on the fundamental view that a conversion of elements which in ordinary circumstances proceeds at an immeasurably slow rate, could perhaps be enormously accelerated by means oil suitable catalysation, and that this effort is demonstrable. FAR-REACHING POSSIBILITIES. It has long bpen known that palladium is capable of absorbing very considerable qut.-tities cf hydrogen. Palladium preparations were therefore, used for this purpose, and the presence of helium was discovered by means of the spectroscope in some of them at the end of only twelve hours. The two chemists point out that the quantity of helium thus demonstrable is infinitesimally small, and can be discovered only by means of the method of investigation that they have elaborated. They also found that palladium preparations soon lose their efficacy, and also that the. efficacy of preparations treated in an exactly similar manner was different. Professor Paneth admits that all he has to show is that helium has been formed from hydrogen. The two chemists consider, however, that they have a definite basis on which to continue their experiments and investigations, and that these offer far-reaching possibilities of the utmost importance. For the present there is no question of economic importance attaching to the experiments.