Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-06-25

universe, which ranges from absolute
zero to absolute heat. We are near
this one end. We live in a world of
cold. 1t takes only 500 degrees TO go,
so to speak, to the end of the cold ex-
IRENE, but we are not within $4,000
degrees of the heat of a Sirius, or dog
star-Cynosure. Now, again, as to Mr..
Tripler and his public lectures on
liquid air: Ever since Paradise man
has wanted to know what is behind
each latest discovery, and a clever ex-
perimenter at limits of heat and cold is
therefore sure of popular approval, if
his disinterestedness and sincerity are
unuuestioned.
ITO facilitate the appreciation of in
tense colds will mention the tempera-
lures at which several we'll known
gases become liquid without pressure.
They are:
Helion (probably) -. 900 degrees f.
Hydrogen ........... 800 degrees F.
Nitrogen .......... 800 degrees f.
Air Observation-Disclosures. -315 degrees F.
Oxygen .............. -270 degrees F.
Ozone ........ ...... 200 degrees F.
Illuminating gas $50 degrees F.
'SThe cold of the universe has been
supposed thus far to be -459 dgrees F.,
or the so-called absolute Zero This
is now we'll proved to be erroneous. 1t
is probably much lower. This explains
the theory advanced, and quite well
proved, that what we see as water on
the panel Mars is probably liquid air;
and in the winter, when Mars shows
snow caps, frozen air or frozen nitro
gen. Mars must be much colder than
our earth. 1t is only one-seventh the
size of the earth, and therefore has
cooled to the same degree which the
earth will reach after the lapse of a
period seven times as long as the whole
duration of our solar system up to the
present.
Nov comes another important
point The question may be properly
asked: What use can we make of
such intense colds and of liquid air.?
Many persons who ask such questions
belong to the same class as the old
time Prussian secretary of the interior,
who said when railroads were first
suggested: Why we have an excellent
system Of post horses and relay
coaches; also fine roads We need no
railway.
I'm similar manner, all discoveries
first pass through the child age, where
they excite marvel and wonder, or
| ridicule, as silly dreams. When
Ampere hung a magnet on silk
thread and watched it for days, his
| friends considered him insane Today
every incandescent light consumes
'amperes' testifying to the value of
those silly experiments. The mass of
humanity progresses far more slowly
| than the sciences. 1t takes years to
| introduce new scientific discovery
into daily life.
ut is true that today we have no use
for teperatures below zero. Our
ammonia machines give us cheaply all
the cold we need 1t would even cost
us about about forty times as much to
cool storehouse with liquified air as
it does with ammonia, but who knows
what may come? It is another strange
fact that as soon. as something new be-
comes known to the popular mind, man
Immediately thinks or asks himself:
| How can I use it to kill my neigh Dor
more scientifically and conveniently?'
For this purpose luqufied air offers
grand facilities. Put little of it in a
pop bottle, give it to your enemy, and
you can wager that in fifteen minutes
he either has his limbs blown off or is
dead
ct is perfectly reasonable to suppose
that the time may come when a man
of-war will carry no gunpowder, but
merely machine making liquified air,
mixed with benzine, cotton, sawdust, or
anything infammable. This, loaded in
a shell and rapidly hurled at an enemy,
would be more effective than any
present explosive compound. Any det-
onator now in use would explode the
mixture