AS COLD AS POSSIBLE

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1781, 10 July 1926, Page 6

AS COLD AS POSSIBLE

MARVELLOUS SCIENTIFIC EXPLOITS. . The death at the age of 73 years of Professor Kammelingh Onnes, professor of physics at Leydon University, and the Nobel prize winner for physics in 1913, recalls one of the most marvellous scientific exploits ever achieved. In 1908 Professor Onnes succeeded in converting the rare and extremely light gas helium into a liquid. Helium, which to-day is used for airships, was the only gas known to resist liquifaction. It was reduced to the liquid state by applying the intense cold near the "absolute zero" of the thermometer, coupled with very great pressiure. In his laboratories at Leyden, Professor Onnes worked unceasingly to reach the "absolute zero," and two years ago he did. succeed in attaining the coldest temperature in the world. He got within one degree of the "absolute zero." Temperature, as the ordinary man knows it, does not exist at these astounding depths. To reach the "absolute zero" it is necessary to go down 23 degrees below freezing point on the Centrigrade scale or over 500 degrees below freezing point on the more familiar Fahrenheit thermometer. To get down at these very low temperatures, another hundredth o fa degree towards the mysterious nothing may represent months or even years of labour; and, in fact, Professor Onnes took twelve years to reach his coldest point. How extraordinarily cold is the temperature which he produced can be understood from the fact that it is as much colder than liquid air as liquid air is colder than boiling water.