SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 68

SCIENCE NOTES.

The Coldest Town. — Wh ere the rivers freeze to the bottom and small trees snap off from the biting force of the cold, stands the coldest inhabited city in this world —Verkoyansck, in North-eastern Siberia. It is a place of some size, stands 150 ft above sou-level, and in winter boasts of a temperature 85dcg below zero. Its annual temperature is 3dcg above zero. The Russian Government owns the town, and is interested in having an administrative centre where clever and industrious Yokuts, fur-trading Jews of Siberia, carry on their operations. Diamonds of All Ages.— Diamonds of the weight of 28 2-5 tons, which would fill a space of 10a cubic yards and have a value of nearly £200.000,000, have been taken from the earth from the earliest time to the present day, according to the estimate just made by M. de Launay, the well-known French metallurgist. These figures, however, only concern the stones before cutting, which reduces their weight volume by half, but multiplies their value by five. A box 3ft high, 6ft wide, and Bft long would thus ho d the world’s total output of these gems in their finished condition, and would have a market value of £940.000,000, according to present prices. Temperature of Stars.— The temperatures of 70 stars have been calculated by Dr 11. Rosenborg, a Gorman astronomer, from comparisons of the differences of intensity in different portions of the sun’s spectrum. One star, Gamma Pcgaei, scorns to have the inconceivable heat of more than 400,000 deg C. The next is much cooler—Gamma Cassionpeiaa, at SO.OCCdeg; but this is vastly hotter than Alpha Tauri, the coolest, at 2150 deg. By the same scale of computation the temperature of our sun is found to bo 4950 deg. The hottest stars are the helium stars, and those showing bright hydrogen lines in their spectra. Land and Water.— In our school days we learned that water covers three-fourths of the earth’s surface, and land the other fourth. This statement dates back to a time when very little was known about the distribution of land and water in the polar regions, and needs to be considerably revised in the light of recent discoveries. Taking account of the results of the latest polar expeditions, Professor Wagner estimates that the ratio between land and water is as 1 to 2.42—in other words, that about three-sevenths of the earth’s surface is land, and the rest water. This estimate assumes that only 10 per cent, of the surface north of latitude S-Odeg north is land —an assumption that may bo coiisiderab’y modified by the forthcoming explorations of the great unknown region north of British America and Eastern Siberia. Radium Salts and Silk.— During the process of combing silk the skeins become highly electrified, and it has been the habit to remedy this condition by maintaining a damp atmosphere in the wokrroom. This is, however, prejudicial to the health of the workers, and may be avoided, according to a writer in Cosmos, by the very simple expedient of placing near each loom a receptacle containing a weak solution of a radium salt. The electric charges issuing from the radium neutralise the electrostatic charge which the threads of si’k acquire by reason of friction. A similar problem in the manufacture of linen has been solved somewhat differently by MM. Paillct, Ducrotet, and To diselcctrify linen during the spinning process, or tfie stretching of the threads, they employ the sparks of high-frequency currents, which arc, as is well known, nonmjurioits to the human body. Narcotic Bullets.— An American contemporary publishes an article giving particulars of a bullet which will carry with it an antidote to the pain it inflicts on the victims of war. The new compound, “ the narcotic bullet,’’ is the invention of Alexander F. Humphrey. Experiments, it is stated, arc being conducted by a committee of army officers, police oilicials, and sportsmen It is considered alike humane In warfare and deadly in hunting big game. In self-defence it provides the poor marksman with all the advantage's of an unerring aim. In his slropproducing missile Humphrey uses a minute particle of morphia. The drug is carried in tiny wells in the stool jacket of the regulation army bullet. Humphrey claims that it in no way interferes with the effectiveness of the missile. The slight indentation in the steel jacket, he says, causes no splintering when it comes in contact with (he bone. The wound of the narcotic bullet, according to his theory, does not differ from that caused by the regulation bullets now used in the approved army cartridges. No deleterious effects will follow the unique administration of the drug. The soldier receiving a slight flesh wound from the imw bullet fights no more that day; ho calmly stretches himself on the ground and goes to sleep. The man receiving a serious wound suffers no agony, as the narcotic from the bullet is absorlwd by his system, and ho is insensible to pain before he reaches the hospital. The man whose wound is mortal sleeps away his last hours, thus doing away with most of the battlefield horror. Ocean Depths.— Dr A. E. Shipley, F.R.IS., in the Edinburgh Review, has an intoiosting article dealing with the science of the sea. in which ho gives a resume of the most recent discoveries in oceanography. As yet the

deepest ocean pit sounded lies in the Pacific. It is 31,614 ft deep, thus surpassing by 2162 ft the height to which Mount Everest rises above the mean ocean-level. Roughly speaking, the heights to which the higher mountains rise above sea-level is paralleled by the depths to which the deepest “deeps’’ sink below that level. Yet. as has often been pointed out, these inequalities are neg igibio as compared with the diameter of the earth, and could we shrivel up our globe to the size of an orange, mountain ranges and abysmal depths would bo no more prominent than the rugosities of the orange-skin. It may bo added that if all the elevations on the earth were removed and filled into all the hollows, wo should have a world smooth as a billiard ball, and completely surrounded by an ocean 1450 fathoms deep. This is called the “mean sphere level." The Atlantic has an average depth differing but little from the “mean sphere level.” Compared with the other great oceans, it has an unusually large area of comparatively shallow water. Of its total area 27.5 per cent, is covered by water Jess than 1000 fathoms deep ; 18 per cent, lies between KXX) and 2000 faThoms. and 47 per cent, between 2000 and 3000 fathoms. The remaining 7.5 per cent, is still deeper. At the foot of the Continental slope lies an illimitable plain of a uniform dull, greyish-buff colour, flat ard featureless as the desert and only diversified by an occasional as yet uncovered rock or wreck, or the straight lino of a recently-laid cable. 'I his plain continues wifh hardly a change in scenery or in level until we approach the great mid-Atlantic ridge. As Bruce has shown, this ridge, which roughly bisects the Atlantic, extends from Iceland as far south as 53dog of south latitude, with a slight and quite inexplicable break just under the Equator. The ridge runs almost parallel with the eastern contour of North and South America, which, in turn, as the ordinary map will show, rough’y corresponds with the western contour of Europe and Africa. From time to time the ridge rises above the surface of the water, as in the Azores group, St. Paul’s Rocks, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, and Gough Island.