Alaska sentinel., 1908-12-24

aen has succeeded in liquefying he lium.
 Terrifying In its destructive aspects and appalling in its danger, yet in- tensely fascinating in its possibilities i for benefiting the world, the latest explanation of chemical science has placed mankind literally within but few degrees of the frozen pole of knowledge.
 Heat is life cold is annihilation The final and absolute extremes of these are as yet heights so exquisite and depths so profound that they mock at once the lens and the plummet-lina of human conception.
 For the sake of convenience, hoy ever, science has established a pure. | ly arbitrary starting point for the measurement of heat and cold. This Is called the absolute zero," and Is fixed at 459 degrees below the fam 1 lliar zero mark of the Fahrenheit thermometers point which chemists have vainly sought to reach ever since Prof. Dewar most nearly ap- preached it by his astonishing feat of liquefying air and hydrogen.
 But even Dewars greatest cold was hundreds of degrees from absolute zero That was some ten years ago. Now comes news from the old town of Ley den in Holland-birthplace of the cleo tric battery-that Prof. H. Hammer 1 lingh Onnes of that city has succeeded In liquefying the rarest and most vo- Iatile of all gases. He has reduced helium to a visible fluid, determined It's temperature and made the incred- lble discovery that 1t is but a frac ton over four degrees from supposed ly theoretical jumping-off place of Jack Frost.
 In order to appreciate the vast sig nificance of Prof. Onnes' achievement It Is only necessary to recall the means by which the air is kept at zero tenn perature In a cold storage warehouse As everyone knows, evaporation causes cold. It Is the evaporation of the wa ter with which you bathe your face not the temperature of the water it. self-which produces the sensation of coolness.
 According as the evaporation is slow or rapid, the cold produced is less or greater. So, in a cold storage plant ammonia gas, which is extremely vol atile, Is allowed to evaporate, either directly into the air or it is released In the presence of brine (which freezes
 
 and the brine, taking the temperature of the evaporating ammonia, is then distributed In pipes throughout the os- tabishment. Thus the desired degree of cold Is imparted to the storage rooms.
 | Now fancy, 1T you can, cold, com pared with which the deadly chill from ammonia gas Is hotter than boiling oil; call this the temperature of liquid hydrogen. Then, with this as a new point of departure, try to imagine a cold so profound that beside it liqu.d hydrogen Itself is as boiling oil, and the frozen heart of an ice plant Is hotter than the bowels of a smelling furnace, and you have some conception of the temperature-if 1t can be callo temperature liquefied helium. | pr. H. T. Galpin, well known authority on refrigeration. a member of the London Society of Chemical h. iustry, the American Chemical Society md the Society of Electrical Engineers. attempted to explain in non-technical language what the new discovery means Q science and humanity.
 "The liquefaction of helium," he said, "is of the most startling and far-reach- ing signif1ance. It opens the door to possibilities of which students of refrigeration have long been aware, but which thus far have been beyond our reach in actual practice. It is apparent, for example, that if we can distribute ammonia chilled brine from