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THEORIES REGARDING RADIUM.THE CREATION OF GOLD.TERRESTRIAL HEAT.AGE OF THE EARTH.In I he Queen's Hall, Perth, on Saturday night. Mr. Soddy, the eminent scientist, delivered the last of his srr-rt- ies of lectures. Tin? lecturer dealt * with several me theories r^nuinj rn-dium, which are intensely interesting. ’• As the lecturer is one of tha most ad-vaoced scientists on the subject, and j hi** remarks having special interest to those engaged in mining, wo give an extended report 31r. Soddy said that the explanation * they had arrived at at the previous I*' lecture to explain the behaviour of ra-* dium must have an important baring on other departments of science. Ra-D dium was slowly undergoing a change. This was similar to the change they knew of in coal when it burned and I gave energy in tho form of light or h heat and the change of dynamite when it exploded. It was at the same time different because it involved o far more fundamental change than any investigated in science before. If they had a body giving out energy of any sort, that body must be undergoing a change, unless, indeed, it had stored up this energy beforehand from some previous source. There was no evidence that radium stored up any energy during the time they had known it, and they were forced to the conclusion that radium must be undergoing a change, -and this change was different from any that had been known before on account of the very intensity of tho phenomena that w-ere manifested. Tho science of chemistry began really with the efforts of the alchemists. a class of people who held that thoycould transmute elements. It was perfectly well.known then that elements were fundamental things, but the alchemists said that in certain secret nostrums and methods they had tho secret of transmutation. The two centuries which followed absolutely disproved all these pretensions. The idea of the elements being something fundamental gradually grew- up among scientific jx-ople, and about the middle of last century Professor Clerk-Mox-well. one of the leading scientist*, described on atom or unit as the foundation stone of the material of the universe. The idea rose that these elements were intranxmutable. They omitted to mention, however, their personal inability to decompose these ele (Dents. The awakening in the scientific world following upon theDiscovery of Radium si,owed (bat although they personally could not do it, the process was goingSon in Nature under their eyes. They now realised their limits better than '» they did five years ago. He had shown^ them at his previous lecture thnation of radium, and he describ'd it L ’ as the transition or intermediate form j in the break up of the heavy clementinto lighter dementsbout 40 otbar alcmenta beddc. radium. befau*e eo“ld not. im*fDeB a fortunate chance the.uvw ...___________ Just follow lor\ a moment the history of the gaseous emanation they drew from a given quantity of radium. It was lately infinitesimal quantity, ana in order that they might detect it it had to be breaking up rapidly. If tiny left the emanation for a few days its energy decayed, and in three weeks it was gone. It was analogous to an ordinary community. The population was regulated by the birth rate and the death rate. They had this emanation produced at a given rate just as they had children bom at a given rate. The emanation had a definite period of life, averaging about 5.3 days, and it thereafter disappeared at a definite rate corresponding to the death rate of the community. These two factors were fixed. There was a steady balance between the rate of production and the rate of decay.. The energy of radium was always Ixnng produced, and was always dying down. Everything they had to guide them proved that the actual change in any given quantity of radium must bo very small. Madame Curie found that her radium did not measurably decrease activity and power after several years, so far as she could tdl. From the firet it appeared bopvlcvs to find out very much about this change. The questionofWhat Radium Changed Into looktd at first sight n rather difficult one to answer. In pitchblende, the mineral in which they found radium, these processes of change must have been going on steadily, and the change from tho radium steadily accumulating century after century. It was. therefore, only reasonable to suppose that these products would have accumulat ed in the pitchblende to a sufficient degree to be easily detected. Unfortunately, the pitchblende containedProblem was Soluble.It was found on the discovery of the rare element helium that it was only got in elements which contained ihor ium and uranium. They ventured the prediction that the helium present the pitchblende wax the product of slow change from radium through long decades of time, aud that helium was one of the dements into which radium changed. They had been able to establish the rate of change that radium was undergoing. About a thousandth port of radium underwent a change evwry year. The question arose of how it was there was any radium left considering the age of the earth. This raised one of the points which had not yet been decided, but he thought there was little doubt that radium had grown, and was growing all the time, from other bodies in exactly tho some way as helium was growing from radium. They could imagine how the discovery of this steady change which was going on had opened up a big field in practically all departments of science. One factor left out of their calculations was time. Rocks did not undergo any appreciable change, so for as they could see, and they come to the conclusion, therefore, that thcee rocks consisted of inanimate matter. Ii, however, they might live for a million years, they would find that slow changes were really going on around them the whole time in all forms of matter. They might, therefore, «look upon the elements as undergoing a Steady Procoss of Evolution in the same way as it was now customary to regard animal types produced from one another by the stead)- action of tbs process of evolution. They could sa)* that they kn.*w more about radium than any other element. If radium was breaking down at thi* rate it was absolutely impossible that any large quantity would ever be found. They would never discover an ore which contained more radium than pitchblende— 1 -10th of a pennyweight to the ton. During his visit to the go Id fields ho was interested by on idea held by some prospectors that gold in homo way grew in the veins of quar-Ix. Until a few years ago such an idea would have been regard'd as absolutely absurd, but at present it was by no (nouns absurd. There might te some scientific law governing the occurrence of go hi in rocks, or tlx* occurrence of minerals in rocks, on exactly the samo lines as the transmutation of matter in radium. At present there was not much chance of this source of energy Ixnng utilised iu any useful way. It was impossible to control the forces which were producing tho change. Until they could control th.-m radium would not affect any great change in the method of obtaining energy on a commercial scale. If they could extract the energy from radium quickly, ho calculated that about seven ounces w-ouldDrive a Mail Steamer from Loudon to Sydney and bock og-aiu. There were other elements, uranium, and thorium, which contained no less energy than radium, but it was given off at a slower rate. If they could utilise radium in this way they could also utilise these two other dements. At present the most interesting problems which were affected by this new knowledge the scientific world now possessed were those connected with astronomy, or, rather, *wmology. A controversy took place during the last half of the last century as to h- ,w long the globe had been habitable. The geologists argned that with the same forces at work ob at present existed, ould, to produce the result' they knew, toko several hundred million years. The physicist said it wus absolutely impossible for the sun to lieve given out heat for more than ten million yearn at the outside. The physicist w as to bo considered as being absolutely wrong in his former otimate as to the possibility of the maintenance of life on the globe. This was the result of the discovery of radium. It was possible that a minute quantity of radium in the earth would count :or the increase which took place in the temperature when they got beneath the surface. The slow charge of this radium dissipated throughout the moss of the earth might be supposed to be giving out rays of sufficient energy to cause theInternal Heat of the Glut**.The heat of the earth «va* on.- of tha arguments which was used by Lord Kelvin to show that the earth was once red hot. It was to be supposed that tho uranium and thorium were suffcient to produce results of this order when they considered the enormous mass of tho earth. I hey could imagine the same thing in regard to the sun. If they had a quantity of matter in the sun undergoing these changes like radium, this would e*ount for the production of light and heat for long ages, for a hundred million years. This was a question for exports. It had always been the only explanation to suppose tha earth started rad hot,other process. Now, with these curious processes of transmutation they could imagine bodies to be giving out heat spontaneously, and it was almost as logical to suppose that at one timethoEarth was Ston«* Cold, and gradually warmed up on account of the slow process of evolution matter present fn tho earth. These new theories had enormously extended tho period during which they could imagine tho earth had been in existence. This was the chief lesson they could draw from radium. As science advanced in all its departments, tfcy had to bear in mind that the period of lime during which the lows of nature hod been in operation must be enormously extended. Every new dis-iovery pointed to a greater period of time. He thought that tho dawning view was that it was possible there was a process of evolution going which had no beginning, and would have no end. Evolution was pr«^-ceding in cycles, and in other paits of tho universe it was just possible there might be a reversal of the |-recess which was going on on the earth. This idea would have boen pooh-poohed very little while ago. In the future they would hove to regard the universe as having been in existence practically continuously ; they could uot regard it as ever having had a beginning, and they could not look upon it as having an end. The whole progress of science lay in this direction, and it opened out a tremendous field of thought. Formerly, it was considered that they were draining away their sour** of light and heat. He did not think that view would be held at present. He thought it was more reasonable to think that there w processes which reversed the normal decay of nature. There was no reason to suppose that they were not proceeding through cycles of evolution continuously. (Loud applause.)to ruir.ir.
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Coolgardie Miner
Coolgardie, Western Australia, AU
Thu, Jul 28, 1904
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