Startling Discovery.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 26, 30 December 1908, Page 46

Startling Discovery.

COEDER THAN ICE. Imagine something as much colder than the coldest thing hitherto known to mankind as ice is colder than boiling water, and you will have some idea of the extraordinary discovery with which a Dutch professor has been credited. He is said to have found out how to liquefy helium, the rarest and most volatile of al! gases. The temperature at which this new liquid may be obtained, it appears, is 450 degrees below zero, so its presence in the world will be sufficient to revolutionise human life. The liquefaction of helium, says a scientist whose opinion was taken on the question, is of the most startling and far-reaching signilicence. It opens the door to possibilities of which students of refrigeration have long been aware, but which thus far hM-e been beyond our reach in actual practice. It is apparent, for example, that if we can distribute ammonia chilled briAe from one room of a cold storage warehouse to all the other rooms in it, we should, theoretically, lie able to distribute it from a central point to houses, office buildings, theatres, and the like, at a distance, a-s is done with gas and steam. But the size and cost of the plant required, the impossibility of developing a degree of. cold which will not be dissipated in transit unless pipes of prohibitive size are employed, has placed the idea in the category of laboratory dreams. Even the use of liquid air or liquid hydrogen would not obviate the last objection. The cost of production and distribution would outweigh the benefits. Science does not recognise the impossible, however, and if it is possible to produce a liquid which, forced to distant points through pipes small enough to lie strung like telephone wires, is so cold that such distribution cannot materially impair its effectiveness —and this seems to be the case—science has achieved a most revolutionary triumph. This discovery, to a mind of scientific imagination, is fraught not alone with the most alluring possibilities for' the well being of mankind, as it may be applied to the increase of comfort and health, but with possibilities of destruction and death beside which the engines and munitions of modern warefare Are plavthings. Let us divide the proportion into two parts, he continued, upon being pressed for an explanation of such a startling statement. Some ears ago when I was conducting some experiments in a cold storage establishment, I sent a number of workmen through the plants to. inspect what are called ammonia gates. These are valve-like openings, by the proper action of which the expansion of the ammonia gas may he regulated at will, the rate of expansion determining the temperature. One of these men, in some way which no one will ever know, kicked open an ammonia gate. Not only was the man instantly killed by the fumes, but he was instantly frozen solid, and broke into pieces when he struck the floor.

Now when you consider that liquid helium is as much colder than vaporised ammonia as a piece of ice is colder than molten lava, you will realise the appalling consequences of its power as an agent of death, should it be employed as an instrument of war or private vengeance. Suddenly liberated in a battleship, it would not only freeze to death every man on board, but the inconceivable cold would at once causa the ship itself with all its guns and machinery to fall in pieces. An office building eooljed by the medium of liquid helium could be wrecked in an instant by the hand of a maniac or one bent on revenge, and every one of its occupants transformed to ghastly statues of ice. Just as sure as we are now conquering the buoyancy of the air, we shall achieve the control of its temperature. While diplomats are protesting friendship at State banquets, secret wires will be laid, and suddenly, at midday, perhaps, a whole metropolis will become a splintered ruin, and its inhabitants frozen solid at their occupations. It is as possible as the telephone was when St. Paul’s Cathedral was built.

But this picture of the future has a bright side as well. It means the practical stopping of the process of putrefaction for one thing. A hollow wire 'of liquid helium just small enough not to freeze water, run through every pipe in a eitv would not only absolutely deodorise the city, but it would kill every germ of disease. Water mains and

sewer pipes would be absolute non-con-ductors of death—as they are now its chief thoroughfares.