MAKING A SUN

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2298, 17 November 1925, Page 5

MAKING A SUN

A REMARKABLE discovery. FRENCH SCIENTIST’S RESEARCH Across the gap between the electrodes of a giant electric machine leaped a mighty arc of blue-white flame. A terrific crackling roar smote the quiet of a Paris laboratory. Then Professor Jean Perrin, white, haired, white.boarded, benevolentfaced, opened a switch with a longfingered white hand. The dazzling

(glare wa snuffer out. The crackling ■ceased. In the sudden quiet even his iow.pitched pleasant voice sounded loud. “It is but the beginning,” he said. “Soon I shall have available a means of producing 10,000.000 volts of direct.current electricity. Then perhaps |1 shall be able to reproduce, on a Ismail scale, the conditions that cause [the radiation of light and heat from the sun and the still more gigantic stars of the universe.” Such is the report given by Freder. ic M. Delano in the October Popular Science Monthly of a remarkable experiment recently completed by Pro. lessor Perrin, head of the laboratory of physical research of the famous University of Paris, an experiment that leads this noted French scientist to believe that eventually he will be able to create, in effect, another sun. “With 10,000,000 volts of directcurrent electricity,” Professor Perrin, “I believe I can break up the atomic structure of matter—dlsinte. grate individual atoms; perhaps even drive the nucleus of one atom into another atom, and thus create a much denser atom. If lam able to do that th e secret cf the sun’s radiation will have been solved.

“I believe,” he explained, “that the sun is formed by the constant changing: of the extremely lirht atoms of hydrogen into atoms of greater weight, such as atoms of oxygen, nitrogen, ,and the other heavier elements. According to my theory—and many other scientists agree with that theory—everything in- the uni versc —the sun, the stars, the planets, and everything on them—once con. aisted of atoms of hydrogen, and these have changed gradually into heavier atoms that make up our atmosphere, our soil, our rocks, our own. bodies. "In changing into any other element I believe that hydrogen changes first into helium, which was found in the, sun before it was found on earth. In doing so, a portion of its atomic weirht is lost and given off as energy This released energy comes to us from the sun in the form of light and heat and makes life possible on earth. “By hurtling against th e atomic structure 10,000 volts of electricity, may be able to produce this change of light atoms into heavier a.toms, and thus, in effect create another sun.’’