A NEW NITROGEN

Evening Star, Issue 21935, 23 January 1935, Page 4

A NEW NITROGEN

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY A now step towards artificial creation of elements, the manufacture of the ordinary oxygen of the air by bombarding nitrogen, a lighter-weight element, with neutrons or parts ot atoms, was reported to the National Academy of Science (states' the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). This represents tlie most difficult kind of transmutation of the elements, the building up of heavier elements out oi lighter ones, a dream ol the old alchemists. It lias now been accomplished on a small scale by Dr William D. Harkins, of the University of Chicago. He has found that neutrons, formerly used only in bombarding and breaking down atoms to unlock secrets of bow they are put together,- also can be used to build up new atoms by the same kind of bombardment. It is roughly like finding that the same cannon balls used to destroy a fort can also paradoxically be used to build up a different and stronger fort. Dr Harkins has discovered a new kind of nitrogen, slightly heavier than ordinary nitrogen, such as is taken from the air to be made into fertilisers and explosives. He found that ordinary nitrogen changed into the new kind when it was bombarded with neutrons moving at tremendous speed. The new nitrogen, however, refuses to hold together, and soon disintegrates, changing into oxygen in the process. The first normal report of the recent discovery that the speed at which light travels apparently is not always the same, which if true upsets many wellestablished scientific rules and facts, was presented to the academy by Dr F. G. Pease, of Mount Wilson (jbserv&tory, California, and Dr F. Pearson, of the University of Chicago, They were originally aided in the work by the late Dr A. A. Michclson.

. They have found that the speed of light seems to vary according to the position of the moon, so that apparently it is affected by the moon’s “ pull,” the same pull that causes the tides of the sea. The speed of light is roughly about 186,000 miles a second, but the scientists have found it varies from six miles per second at different times, and they cannot explain the difference on the basis of errors in measurement.