ALCHEMY OLD AND NEW

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 2 May 1928, Page 4

ALCHEMY OLD AND NEW

SIR E. RUTHERFORD’S DISCOVERIES. SOME “MIRACLES” OF TRANSFORMATION. LONDON, March 11. At the Royal Institution, yesterday afternoon. Sir Ernest Rutherford gave the first of four lectures dealing with the progress so far made in the attempt to transform matter from one state to another. The lecturer referred to a papyrus dating from the third century, which gave recipes for alloying .metals together so as, to give the appearance of gold and silver, which, he suggested, were very useful to dealers in imitation jewellery, who probably flourished in those day's. But this was not transmutation, which was honestly based on the belief that the whole matter of the universe was made of one primitive type of matter, moulded, us it were, into varied, distinct and different substances hv various combinations of earth, fire and water. Jf the amounts of those “elements” could he varied, or. perhaps, removed altogether, the old. al hcniists believed any substance could at will ho changed into another. “Those who believe in the possibility of transmutation.” said a well-known scientist in those days, “are deluded persons o’- imposters, for if they could accomplish it they would be terrestrial angels.” MEDIEVAL “STUNTS.” The successes claimed in those: days, said the lecturer, wore probably due to the sensational Press of that period, and as it is well known that minute traces of gold exist in many substances, where gold was said to have been produced from baser metals the gold was present all the time, and was certainly not a case of transformation. Within the last few years German 'and l Japanese scientists had- claimed to have produced gold from mercury by passing, electrical current through mercury vapour, and much had appeared concerning this miracle in the nowsoaoers. But the minute amounts of gold thus ‘ ‘transmuted” were present either in the mercurv or the electrodes. for where other experimenters had carried out exactly the same experiment. first of all taking the precaution to remove all foreign substance from the materials used, not a trace of gold was produced. THE RADIUM REVOLUTION.

Up to the end of the nineteenth, century the theory of the permanency and indestructibility of tho atom was the foundation of chemical and physical science. Then came the sensational discovery of radium and other radio-active substances, which revolutionised all ideas of the atom and the structure of matter. Before one’s eves these substances van be seen transforming themselves into other substances by spontaneously ejecting alpha, beta, and gamma particles from their atoms, and effecting changes in -their chemical and physical properties that result in the production of ouite different substances. There arc now known to he over 90 substances continually transforming themselves by marvellous natural processes wh i-h no chemical or physical methods can prevent, hasten, or slow down. SPEEDING UP EVOLUTION.

Scientists arc trying to do what is being done by radium and the other radio-active substances, and how . far they have succeeded Sir Ernest Rutherford will explain in his subsequent lectures, for by utilising the particles shot out of radium ho has already achieved the transformation of matter in some ,small measure; hut he encourages no hone that at -present success on a scale that would make transformation of matter a commercial proposition is possible. “ft might he possible,” Sir E. Rutherford said yesterday, “to achieve transformation of matter on a minute scale. Rut if the thing were achievable at will, the whole of the l universe would go through its long cycle’ of evolution in a. feu- hundred years.”