SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

MAKING ARTIFICIAL SUGAR, Tho problem of making artificial sugar, which has long occupied the attention of organic chemists, has, it is claimed, at last been solved by two Swiss scientists, Drs. Anno Pietet and Ilans Vogel, who announce that they havo succeeded in making synthetic sugar cane. The well-known German chemist, Emil Fischer, succeeded, in 1890, in producing grape-sugar synthetically; his .attempts to, produce cane-sugar likewise at that time were unfortunately unavailing. Tho same thing was true of fruit-sugar (fructose) substance very similar to grape-sugar, found with it in many sweet fruits and honey and present in diabetic patients. Cane-sugar or beetsugar is in some respects similar to the grape-sugar and fructose mentioned above; it consists of equal parts of grape-sugar and fructose, each of which can be built up synthetically from carbon monoxide j and hydrogen, or, to go a step further, I from carbon and water.

But hitherto tho art of tho chemist has not been capable of so combining these two building stones of cane-sugar as to obtain the end product. It is this which the Geneva scientists have accomplished, so that it is now possible to produce one of the most important products of nature without the assistance of tho sugar-cane or sugar-beet. Scientists admit that this , new discovery is, for tho present, of purely theoretical importance; it would bcfollv to base on it the hope that artificial sugar, manufactured in chemical works, H'ill take the place of that from plants within the near future. _ But the discovery is held to be significant, because tho knowledge thus obtained may point the way under the -proper circumstances toward tho synthetic creation of other valuable products for which man is thus far indebted to plants alone Tho method pursued by the Geneva investigators i 3 based upon the work of the German sugar chemist, Emil Fischer, and the English and American investigators, Irvine, Haworth, and Hudson. The building stones which combine to form cane-sugar are grape-sugar and fruit-sugar, or fructose, which can be built up by comparatively simple methods from carbon and water? If a molecule of grape-sugar is added to a molecule of fructose and one molecule of water is abstracted therefrom, the resulting product is cane-sugar.

FOUND BY MEANS OF ECHOES. Echoes have just'aided in two important marine discoveries that may help to explain an ocean mystery, the origin of lli o Humboldt current, says Popular Mechanics'. The writer jays:—" By firing detonating shells from a 20ft. brass shotgun, and determining the timo the echoes took to return from the floor of the sea, scientists on board the non-magnetic yacht Carnegie have found two now ranges of mountains under the ocean. Ono is more than a mile high above the sea floor and 100 miles off the coast of Ecuador. The other rises to a height of 9750 ft., and runs north-west, and southcast, 400 miles to the north of Juan Fernandez Island. It is believed that this range may be a contributing cause to the Humboldt current and mnv also be a remnant of the sunken lands whence sprang the mysterious Easier Island civilisation. WHERE SMOKERS ARE BANNED. Science and smoking often go together —but not always. One scientist has recently revealed that tobacco is fatal to certain kinds of research work. For instance. scientists have been trying to estimate the phosphates in sea-water. So delicate are the tests that an investigator can estimate down to one ten-thousandth of a milligram, but if a smoker entered tho laboratory while ,ho was doing this, the whole of'the work might be useless. Even though he wasn't smoking, if he had the tiniest speck of tobacco ash on his coat, containing, say, one per cent of phosphate, that would upset everything. Smoking is, of course, banned where explosives arc made or kept j and it has also been made illegal in certain large forest districts in America, because of the risk of fire. This risk exists in Britain also, and many destructive heath fires have probably been started by smokers.