NEW DISCOVERY

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 April 1933, Page 2

NEW DISCOVERY

PHOTOGRAPHING THE ATOM. Knowledge of the atom has been advanced to a remarkable extent by work at Cambridge which is causing a scientific sensation. Dr. Blackett and Mr. Occhialini have produced before the Royal Society photographs of disintegrated atoms that demonstrate the quite new discovery of a positive electron. The substance of an interview given to a representative of “The Daily Telegraph” by Dr. E. N. da C Andrade (Quaiu Professor of Physics in the University of London) is as follows: — “This discovery is extraordinarily interesting. It opens fresh possibilities, but I do not think it will invalidate the main conclusions that have been formed as to the structure of the atom. The experiments that have been made will have far-reaching theoretical implications, and they will cause much excitement in the scientific world. Never before has anything been detected as positive electricity divorced from matter, and that is why this work is so important. ‘Dr. Blackest and Mr. Occhialini, for the purpose of their experiments, relied on cosmic radiations, which have much greater energy than any particle we can produce in the laboratory, but cosmic rays present difficulties. “The actual photography is a simple process, but the skill and patience required in detecting the present remarkable effects have been of a very high order. Much more will be heard of it.”