THE MIGHTY ATOM

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 July 1939, Page 11

THE MIGHTY ATOM

New source of power. A discovery of such terrific potentialities' that it may transform the world beyond man’s wildest dreams is being investigated in the laboratories of Britain and certain other countries (writes C. A. Lyon, in the “Sunday Express”). The experiments concern a new way of producing energy in inconceivable quantities by splitting the atom of a rare metal called uranium. if the experiments succeed 11b. of the metal will produce as much power as 20,000,000 tons of coal do now. The new potential power was described by one fo the scientists who are investigating it as “too great to trust humanity with.” The new power is derived from the release of the energy in the atom. This

energy has long been known to exist in enormous quantities, but it has never been possible till this year to release it except to a very small extent at prohibitive expenditure. Then a new way of doing it was discovered. The older method was devised by the celebrated scientist, Lord Rutherford in 1919. His method depended partly on the fact that the nucleus of every atom of any substance in the world consisted of two kinds of particles —first, the protons, which are electrically-charged particles; secondly, the neutrons or neutral particles, which have no electric charge. Lord Rutherford released the energy of the atom by splitting it with a bombardment of what are called Alpha particles. These particles are composed of two neutrons and two protons. When the 1 atom of the bombarded substance broke up. it would form two substances. But in addition it would set free a fabulous amount of energy. The average for a single atom, an object only one two-hundredth millionth of an inch in diameter, was to release four or five million electron volts of energy. The only thing was that in order to produce this amount of energy other energy thousands of times greater still was necessary. Last Christmas a revolutionary discovery was made by a German worker called Hahn. Hahn noticed that there was one substance which when bombarded with neutrons did not behave like the others. This substance was uranium, a rare metal, and the heaviest of all substances. It looks like iron and it is considerably heavier than lead. All other substances except uranium divide up itno a heavy substance, and light-weight particles when bombarded with neutrons. But Hahn found that uranium divided up into two heavy substances. Workers in all countries seized on his discovery. It was found simultaneously in Copenhagen, New York, and England that the breaking up of uranium produces 40 times as much ; energy as the breaking up of other sub- , stances. i But oven this was not the most hu-

portant thing. For xuough uranium produces 40 times more energy in breaking up than other substances it still takes a force of 10,000,000,000,000 volts to produce only 200,000,000 volts of energy from the atom of uranium. The discovery beyond all these things which was destined to shake the world was that both the broken-up halves of the uranium went on firing out. neutrons, themselves. Each neutron fired out from the “halves” attacked other atoms of uranium. These atoms in turn attacked others. \ In other words, the atom, once broken up, goes on breaking up more and more atoms. Each atom releases 200,000,000 volts. The energy is thus released in ever-growing quantities, ju,st as a bit of rock will produce an avalanche of snow. “As yet the process has been seen in phly a very small way because impurities in the uranium have made the. “chain reaction” process fizzle out. But if it could continue —and there does not seem any reason why it should not —the outpouring of energy would exceed anything ever known in the world.

ll: the splitting up of a single atom of uranium would result in more and more splitting up 'and if each gives off 200,000,000 volts anything in the world may result.