THE ATOM SMASHED

Evening Star, Issue 21012, 28 January 1932, Page 16

THE ATOM SMASHED

BROKEN DOWN BY 3,000,000 VOLT FORGE iks*! ' The atom has been smashed. Dr Robert A. Millikan, _ the most famous United States physicist and a scientist of world renown, made this announcement casually when he disembarked from the Aquitauia hero to-day (writes the New York correspondent of the London ‘ Daily Herald ' on Tuesday, December 2 last). Ho was on his way back to his home at Pasadena, California, from Germany. “Dr Carl D, Anderson and 1 have succeeded in smashing the atom,” ho said, “ by making use of an electro-motive force of about three million volts. This tremendous concentration of electrical energy easily disintegrated atoms. The electrons which they contained scattered with the speed of light (186,000 miles a second), while their protons scattered at half that speed.” Every atom, according to physical theory, resembles something like a minute solar system. Its “ sun ” is a very dense nucleus composed of protons. Round this spin at incredible velocities varying numbers of electrons. The protons and electrons in each different kind of atom are identical. The differences between the atoms depend on the number of electrons in each. Electrons have often been expelled from atoms as a result of various experimenters’ work. But Dr Millikan is the first to claim that he has “ shattered ” , an atom, scattering electrons and protons in space and completely destroying the atomic structure which his experiment, attacked. MYSTERY RAYS TACKLED. LORD RUTHERFORD’S DISCOVERY. By a curious coincidence Lord Rutherford, professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, on the same day as the above announcement from Now York, revealed that he had found the origin of the Gamma rays, the source of which has long been a problem. Lord Rutherford, whoso twenty-five years’ research into radio-activity has won him the title of “Britain’s master' scientistj” made the announcement at the opening of an exhibition of the British Institute of Radiology at the Central Hall, Westminster, S.W. “It now seems clear,” he said, “ that the Gamma rays arise from the Alpha particles in, the nucleus of the atom, and have nothing to do with the electron. “ This discovery will throw light on the nucleus itself, and is of great importance.” The Gamma rays are a form of radiation given out when the atom of a radio-active substance breaks down.