LECTURE ON HELIUM

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 26, 30 July 1931, Page 22

LECTURE ON HELIUM

DISCOVERY AND NATURE

COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 20th May.

..-: Before the Koyal Institution, Lord Rutherford delivered an address ou "Helium and Its Properties.^ Helium, a non-inflammable gas, has been adopted by, the.United States instead of hydrogen for use in airships, and tho advantages of the immunity of the gas from fire were given much prominence at' the ■ time of the RlOl disaster. Lord Rutherford said that it was possible that rich concentrations of helium might be found on the eastern slopes of the. Rocky Mountains in Canada. , ; '.- The lecturer described how helmm was discovered, in 1868, when Janseu and Loekyer noted that the visual spectrum of the sun's chromosphere showed a bright yellow line of unknown origin. Loekyer suggested, that these lines were due to. an undiscovered element to which he gave the . name helium. Following a suggestion by Sir Henry Miers in 1895, Ramsay purchased about one gramme of. the mineral cleveite from a dealer for 3s 6d, and proceeded to purify the gases; evolved and to examine their spectra. ~A number of new lines were observed and a spectrum tube containing the. new gas temporarily called crypton by Ramsay was sent to Sir "William Crookes for a detailed study of its-spectrum. Crookes reported tersely: "Crypton is helium; come and see it." We now knew that

helium was the first of a ■ remarkable group of inert : monatomie gases. In 1903 Eamsay and Soddy-found that helium, was.produced by the transformation of radium, and .Rutherford showed that the alpha particles which are ejected with great velocity from radio-active atoms were identical with helium nuclei. '

It was probable, saia Lord Rutherford, that the greater part,,if not all, of the helium found in the earth and in the natural gases escaping from the earth owed its origin to: the alpha particles expelled from the radio-active elements during their transformation in the earth's crust. There could be no doubt that helium was formed from hydrogen under some as yet unknown conditions in the stellar system. However, it had not yet been found possible to produce helium from hydrogen under laboratory conditions.: Millikan claimed that the absorbable part of the cosmic rays must be attributed to the radiation • emitted -in : the • formation of helium in the depths of space.. The alpha particle or helium nucleus had proved of great importance in extending our knowledge- of the • structure of nuclei, and it was-now believed that the nuclei of the heavier elements were composed mainly of alpha particles ana electrons. - ' ' ,„,.-, ' It was in 1914 that Sir Richard Threlfall suggested to the Board of Inventions of the Admiralty that, on account of its lightness and non-inflammability, helium might prove of great service for balloons and airships. The commercial prospects of the use of helium in airships and other purposes.had led to a search ;for rich concentrations ot helium While most natural gases contained less than 1 per cent, of helium, there had been recently found in Colorado by boring a rich mixture which contained over 7 per cent, of helium by volume. A plant had been installed which dealt with about 600,000 cubic feet of gas a day. This should give an annual production of helium of 12,000,----000 cubic feet;. It will be possible to find similar rich concentrations on the eastern slopes of the Boeky Mountains in Canada. A small gas field was found a few years ago not far from Toronto, which had a content of 0.8 per cent, "helium. ' Tho rights of those wells had been secured for the University of Toronto.