MIGHTY ATOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19198, 14 June 1924, Page 10

MIGHTY ATOM

STOREHOUSE OF ENERGY. SIR OLIVER LODGE’S FORECAST. LONDON, May 30. Speaking at a science conference at Wembley, Sir Oliver Lodge, the noted scientist, expressed the opinion that it was unlikely that half a century would elapse before the immense energy contained in the atom could be applied to practical purposes. He could conceive future aeroplanes, steamships, and locomotives propelled Ijke a rocket, by the reaction from a small quantity of material ejected from the tail at an immensely high speed—a speed much greater than gases expelled by the most powerful explosives. The atom, according to the modem scientific view of it, is an almost infinitesimal particle of matter built up m electrons, which are now pictured as in the form of a planetary system, in which they revolve in a ring with possibly a central sun or nucleus to their orbit. Certain atoms of matter, like those of uranium, break up and throw out rays, which themselves are not matter. The most remarkable accomplishment of modern jihysics is that these electrons have been weighed and measured. The electron is 100,000 times smaller than the atom. {Scientists, like. Sir Oliver Lodge, now believe that immense energy resides within the atom, sufficient, if it could be released, to supply illimitable power for the use’ of the world. No scientist has so thoroughly investigated the atom or suggested its possibilities as Eir Ernest Rutherford, the most distinguished of all New Zealanders.