RUNS UNIVERSE

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 January 1938, Page 10

RUNS UNIVERSE

DISCOVERY OF SCIENCE. Ever since. Newton discovered the law of gravity we have believed that its force < the power with which it causes every mass to attract every other mass, the greater the mass the greater the attraction), was the most powerful in. the whole mighty unisu rse.

Now there lias been discovered a I force mightier than gravity, and as l universal. It is the force that holds together the smallest particles from which this world and the universe it- ! self is made. It is a commonplace of knowledge to-day that the universe and everything in it is ultimately composed of identical matter. The sun. the stars, our mountains, and seas, we human beings and our animals, the clothes we wear and the lilies 1 of the field, the steamship we travel in and the pen we write with—every single- thing that we can see and touch —all are but. different, combinations of identical protons and electrons. The atom of hydrogen is the simplest speck of matter, for it consists of one proton and one electron. Helium is| made- up of two protons, and two electrons; carbon of six of each, sodium of 11, iron of 26, lead of 82. Now the proton is l positively charged

! with electricity, and the electron is I negatively charged, these two charges c-xactly neutralising each other. Tho electron itself is almost inconceivably light, so that, practically Ilin whole weight of any atom lies in its nucleus of protons. The greater the number of protons in the atom of any element, the heavier its weight. Tims iron with its 26 protonw is just over four and a half limes the weight of carbon with its six protons, and (lead, having 82, is nearly three times land a half ms heavy as iron. The most remarkable thing about the nucleus is the fact that no matter how many protons are present, they | seem to occupy no more room than one proton. They cling together so closely ns to be practically a solid mass.* Yet. by all known laws, one i posit ively-charged speck should re|pulse any other positively-chargec? |torco, so strong that it overcomes even 1 the laws of electricity? This is the vital question which the Carnegie Institute of Washington is' now trying to solve. By the aid of an atomic gun, protons are being fired at incredible speeds at other' protons. Projected at less than 8000' miles a second the. proton bullets’ merely bounce off the proton t3r~ets. At 9000 ci see on cl cvldc-ncs lias' been found that; bullet and target have joined forces!

Following this result, complicated’ mathematics proved that when two protons are made to approach within' one twelve-billionth of an inch of each other the electrical law of mutual repulsion is overcome by some new force, the force which binds the protons indivisibly together. , There exists, then, a force greater than electricity, greater than gravity. A power that holds together not tho atom only. but. the whole, world andeverything it contains. Without the-| all-pervading. vice-like grip of this] strange power space would contain no! suns, no stars, no worlds —nought butt haphazardly drifting combinations’ made up of one proton and one elec-*' iron—just, atoms of hydrogen and nothing else.