BONDERS OF RADIUM.

Evening Star, Issue 12093, 14 January 1904, Page 1

BONDERS OF RADIUM.

In a remarkable lectors at the London I» gtitution recently Sir William Eamsay mwk the important statement that radium gives off » heavy , gas, which slowly changes into helium ana then vanishes. He found thai after the emanation of radium had been collected for. a couple of days its spectrum—which previously was entirely unlike any yet studied--began to display the typical yellowline of helium, the gas first known and oltristened by its constant presence In the sun. In four or five days; the helium lines grew brighter, and in, another week the si eotrnm of helium wis positively blazing m the her-metically-sealed tubes .that had been filled with the pure emanations, or gaseous output,, of.radium. In other words, cne eiement had been literally seen to change ‘nso arr-thef of' quite different nature nnder the eyes of the experimenters. Was not this. Sir William, asked, an actual cate of. that i ransmutatibn of one element into ahdther m wbteh the ancient alchemists beGeved when they painfully sought to chaqge lead-into goldP JCo doubt ho must not be taken to mebn that the alchemists had a grasp of vhe reaf truth—still less that'their chmisy crucibles end alembics had elicited a fact which only too appliances of the most perfect' modern laboratories are competent to show. Jut this realisation of one of the oldest .of human dreams was very suggestive, and time would show whether we were on the i threshold of discoveries tending aQ our wise men have ever forgotten- .