THE MARVELS OF SCIENCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1651, 21 October 1903, Page 74 (Supplement)

THE MARVELS OF SCIENCE.

For a score of years past tlie world has commonly said that its future progress lies with, electricity, and with good reason. A fluid that can fetch and carry messages around the globe, and through the depths of the sea. with more than the speed of Ariel : and which now, with no bond more tangible than “ the broad and general casing air/’ enables ships ■to speak each other thousands of miles apart at sea, might well be deemed: the Xing Wizard of all wonder workers. But great as are the achiev-em-ents of electricity, they have given us only a peep into the marvellous storehouses of Nature. We have always felt that the pioneers of science were on the threshold of some marvel which might eclipse everything that has gone before. But all this expectation centred in ©l-ectricity as the agent which was to bring it about. While this may still he true, thought is now turning to the) new substance .radium as the scientific marvel of the hour, within which lies potential possibilities exceeding all that the dreams of man have* yet compassed. Perhaps tlie most stupendous wonder about this mew body is that while existing in microscopic dimensions it has stimulated gigantic expectations. Dr. Bolton thinks that all the radium which now exist® in tire world might very well lie in a teaspoon. Yet so startling are its properties that it has set all THE MEDICAL WOULD

and half the meohanicai circles of the gi'obe Speculating about it. For one thing it possesses the capacity for giving out heat, and light without combustion. How this ©an be is at present an insoluble mystery. Chemistry is quite unable to fathom it. Far five months continuously light and' heat have been emitted from a few grains to th® extent of several candle power, but no perceptible change hag taken place in. the substance. This was at first deemed incredible ; but the chomiat Demarcay has eet doubts at rest. The reason why so infinitesimal a (Quantity of radium exists is because as yet man does not know where to readily find the material's out of which to manufacture it. To produce a single ounce of it costs .£15,000. A singl-s grain of radmm is capable of giving out a constant streajm of light for centuries to corne without apparent diminution'; and thel quality of its light is therapeutic in so extra ordinary a degree that it is co nfidently said to cure the most malignant cancer as readily as an insecticide solution shrivels the aphis on a rose bush. A mous® exposed for a time to the seemingly harmless rays of radium dies in an hour or so. Th© mere light of it is a germicide. It permeates xnetal as do the X rays, only with more powerful effects-. A grain of radium put into a leaden box an inch thick flashes a bright ray on the human retina, even in tho 1 case of the blind. It is said that a minute speck of

this metal would give out light enough to illuminate a large room, and that it would never need renewing for a century. This, of course, would be all very wall from an economic point iof view, in so far as it would supercede gas and electricity, hut we should need some security that it would not slowly do for man what: it so quickly does for the mouse. RADIUM was first discovered in 1838. but only quite lately have some of its properties been tested, more especially its curative functions. It has just been found, for instance, that it can cause air to become a conductor of electricity, Dame Nature has always been coy in giving up her secrets, and in respect to radium sue is remarkably niggardly. On the continent of Europe and in the United States of America chemists have laboriously analysed tons and tons of earth in the anxious search for even a few tiny grains of the precious body, and generally their pains are but sparingly rewarded by a residual salt containing a quite unknown percentage of radium. Without much greater research the world could not hope to get a supply of radium sufficient to compass great things ; but it is impossible to believe that the march of knowledge will stop where it is. -especially when we con-tem-piate the social revolution that must follow the manufacture of this salt on any moderately large scale. A. substance which can give out immense stores of energies for a century without combustion or exhaustion approaches startlingly near to perpetual motion—the illusive dream of sages through the ages. 80-me idea of what it is capable of under given conditions may be judged from the calculations made by two chemists named Rutherford and Curie. According to them there is stored up in A SINGLE GRAIN of radium an energy sufficient, supposing it could be applied at any given point of time, to raise 500 tons of matter a. mile hi°di. That is a statement which takes away the breath. It means thiifc an ounce of radium, similarly treated, would drive a 50-horse motor at the rate of 30 miles an hour, all round the world. But as yob science ha-3 got to perform the task of bringing this wonderful body under subjection. As we know it, it gives off its light and heat steadly and continuously without the smallest apparent diminution of power, but it cannot as yet be stimulated to any intensity of action beyond that which flows from it naturally. If it could, one immediate result would be that men would traverse the air with as much ease as they traverse the ocean. Weight would be largely eliminated from the driving power of the air-ship, as it would, indeed, from that of every other means of locomotion. Men have asked of late, somewhat anxiously, what are we going to do when our coalmines are exhausted. At first thought this seems a far-away fear, in view of the enormous coal-beds in China and South Africa as yet untouched. But when we contemplate the prodigious expansion of the means cf coal consumption and the rate at which Great Britain has for forty or fifty years been living on her fuel capital, for some parts of tlie world the question is quite a practical one. The new properties which have been discovered in the radium salts touch the problem of productivity at a thousand points. The lighting, beating and therapeutics of the world may all undergo a revolution. We tremble on the verge of UNIMAGINABLE POTENTIALITIES. Dr. -Bolton himself, in the “ Popular Science Monthly/’ asks these questions : —•“Will not scientists be compelled to revise some of their theories of physics that they regard at present as cardinal ? And wlxat are the conditions in the earth beneath our feet when inert matter manifests -energy to such an amazing extent without a known cause ? The future opened to students and philosophers is fraught with mysteries, the solution, of which will be eagerly awaited by the rest of the world.” When Rontgen produced bis X rays they were the wtender of. the day. Tho radium rays will do all that the X rays da in medicine and far more. They can be mad© to apply with a minuteness and precision which as yet are impossible to the X rays on account of the cumbrous nature of the lamp necessary to their production. If all diseases are of germ origin-, and if it has been proved that radium, rays have absolutely destroyed two malignant cancers, why may we not enlarge the -scope of our vision and contemplate a time when morbidity ©hall be virtually extirpated from the earth-, and all men and women except those killed in war or by accident, shall go down to the grave only through the process of senile d-ecay ? Or, if senile decay be itself a process of germ-cell exhaustion, may no-t this also be arrested, and the twentieth century hit on the Elixir of Life, which the alchemists of old sought for so industriously and missed? Mein perforce smile at the liazarddou© .guesses of tbs future ; but even the sceptical are compelled to confess that actual achievement© on the electric wire, telephony, wireless telegraphy, X rays, and! the latest and moat marvellous discoveries of the properties of radium transcend all eighteenth century imaginings. One thing we may be certain of. With radium worth <£io,oQo an ounce, and with the allurements of fame, which will attract thousand© of -explorers in laboratories all over the globe, there willbo no lack of busy brains, seeing eyes, and deft hand© in its production. Men may be s-tartled at any moment by an announcement that will set the blood of the who-Ig world tingling with expectation, and which wil show that this old beldame Earth of ours is in her green youth, and with the caves containing her greatest opulence unopened.