ANEW ELEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 9

ANEW ELEMENT

THE WORK OF PHYSICISTS

Four years ago Professor Enrico Fermi bombarded element 92. otherwise known as uranium, with neutrons, obtained an entirely new element, and assigned it to the ninetythird place in the table, says the "New York Times." It was a sensational discovery because chemists had reached the conclusion that there could be only ninety-two elements: In spite of some errors. Fermi's work has been confirmed. Now comes Professor Jean Perrin, Nobel Prizp winner., and announces before the French Academy of Sciences that his associates have found element 93 in some natural substance. Because of his great' reputation he commands respect. ■ Yet the few physicists who have commented on his announcement confine themselves to a noncommittal "very interesting" and prefer to wait for the inevitable scrutiny of the evidence.

The mere. fact that physicists .now believe in element 93 and suspect that there may be elements 94 and 95 arouses the suspicion that we make too nice a distinction between "natural" and "artificial." There were good reasons for holding that a transuranium element could not exist "in nature." But as soon as the transuranium element is produced artificially, even though the quantity be too small for experimentation, it takes its place on earth and therefore in Nature. And if man can produce the. unproduceable. why not Nature also? So we must wait until the work done in Professor Perrin's laboratory is checked. What puzzles is the discovery of anything so fleeting as. element 93. It has a life of minutes, whereupon it becomes something else, something stable.