THE MYSTERY OF RADIUM.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14345, 25 October 1910, Page 8

THE MYSTERY OF RADIUM.

The isolation of pure radium by Madame Curio in Paris last mouth was another step towards the solution of the riddle which has puzzled physicists since lSt’6, when the late M. Bccqtierel accidentally discovered the radio-active properties of radium salt. Madame Curie, with the assistance of her husband, undertook the study of the phenomenon, and she discovered in uranium, which had been thought to ho a distinct clement, two substances which she called radium and polonium, the latter in honour of her native country in Poland. Several months ago she succeeded in obtaining pure polonium, and tjien she turned her attention to the production of pure radium. She performed the most difficult *isk first, because, rare as is radium, polonium, which Professor Rutherford has proved to bo one of the products of the decomposition of the other metal, is rarer still. From six tons of pitchblende perhaps three tons of salt of uranium can be obtained, artd this quantity of uranium will supply barely one gramme of radium and less than one five-thousandth part of a gramme of polonium. The value of the gramme of radium at present prices is about £IO,OOO. but*a cable message published the other day states that the discovery of pitchblende in Cornwall is likely to cause a reduction in prices. Madame Curie is now devoting her attention to the stnjly of polonium, the final radio-active product of the wonderful radium scries. There is said to ho good reason for the belief that polonium separates from the helium which is a of its substance mid then becomes simply ordinary lead. M, f.o Bon, a famous French scientist, remarked a few years ago that radium would nifvcr be isolated. He might have avoided this error if he had followed the rule laid down by Sir William Ramsay. “Scientifically,” the great scientist once said, “one should always he in a state of doubt. I begin to doubt that assertion as soon ns I have made it.” Most of the properties of the radio-active substances are still mysteries to the scientific world.