WHAT WILL BE THE NEXT GREAT THING?

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 55

WHAT WILL BE THE NEXT GREAT THING?

Sir Oliver Lodge-writes in the Strand Magizine the first of what promises to be a fascinating series of replies by eminent scientific men to the question: What is likely to be the next great discovery or invention? "A whole series of very feasible achievements group themselves round the better utilisation of energy,"-he writes. "Every physical activity on the planet consists'in the movement of matter; that sums up all that humanity can do on the material plane. —lntrinsic Energy of Matter.— "Undoubtedly we live amid vast stores of energy," says Sir Oliver. "Material bodies are full of a kind of activity about which we know very little, and of which at present we are unable to make any use. We do not in the least know how to harness the energy locked up in the atoms of matter. But, then, before the era of Watt and Newcomen, we. did not know how to utilise the molecular energy of heat for the production of mechanical power. We now employ the one form of energy freely; we have only recently discovered the other. "Ordinary matter seems so quiescent and placid and inert, yet to the eye of the physicist it is a scene of well-regu-lated but intense activity. "These radio-active elements contain no more energy than the others, but they are less stable, they cannot so effectively conceal what they have got. "From them accordingly projectiles are emitted—of small size indeed, but with amazing velocity—a velocity far beyond anything known, except the velocity of light itself. They are shot off with a speed which, if there were no obstruction, would carry the particles from London to New York in the twinkling of an eye. And from a speck of radium millions of such atomic projectiles are shot every second. "If the energy thus discovered in ordinary matter could be liberated at will, we should experience a violence beside which the suddenness of high explosives is gentle and leisurely. "Will this intra-atomic energy ever be tapped, in a controlled and regulated manner, so, that it can be applied to useful purposes? —Etherial Energy.— "And there is yet another still more secret store of energy, unknown, unsuspected, and undisplayed, barely discovered as yet, but inferred, which exceeds the atomic energy just mentioned as far as that exceeds in vigour the ordinary processes of combustion. "Every cubic inch of the ether of space is full of the most portentous possibilities. It is full of an energy beside which the sporadic energy of material bodies shrinks into insignificance. "The word 'ethereal' signifies something filmy and unsubstantial; our modern conceptions of the ether of space are very different. If it exist at all, the ether is massive and substantial to an extraordinary degree—far more substantial than the gossamer-like structure to which our senses respond and which appeals to us as ordinary matter. So we must modify the adjective to suit this conception, and either use Milton's word 'ethereous,' or spell it differently, as 'etherial,' so as to remove the ancient, inappropriate connotation from the word. —Energy Tremendous.— "I have reckoned that every cubic millimetre of the ether of space contains an amount of energy equal to the total output of a million horse-power station working day and night for 30,C00 years. "But how to get at it—hew experimentally to establish its existence by direct demonstration and not by inference —neither I nor anyone at present has the slightest idea. But unless the physics of tho past quarter of a century is badly mistaken, the energy is there. And it would be foolish to set a limit to the possibilities of discovery. Once the slightest clue is found for tho detection and apprehension of this etherial energy—and no such clue is even dimly in sight at present—its \itilisation will only be a question of time. "When that times comes—if ever it does," says Sir Oliver Lodge—"every other source of energy will sing into insignificance, for the store is omnipresent and absolutelv Pxhau?tleis."