Richmond times-dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1914-current, 1922-01-01

8 ySss 8 s sg
s@ A Tear-Drop
s.3s Coursing
Down This
I Girls Cheek
1875 Contains Enough
Explosive Energy
s# 1t Is Declared, to
Wreck the Biggest
ss Building in the
SH World.
2 4FSaSs ssS ssp ~ Naturally with 80
ssasss: SSgG5| much tclk Of explosives,
sSs s'S S5sssY one thinks OF the war.
SNss sss S OF the future. 1t would
~ XII mean that in place of
lsSsSssc ls&TSsI huge ammunition trains,
,, ssSSsssTsAsY great siega guns, battle
SH# ships and tons of It. N. T.,
$50 Hs% one could carry in his coat
ssxSr gsI pocket enough explosives to
86yW annihilate the greatest army
a%sfsS that ever marched. Cities
ss ST and states could be literally
Z SssS blown off the map.
yag8 At first blush it appears
tI8T that the nation which learned
GGss9y and guarded such n secret,
gSW even though that nation were
s% as small as the tiny municipality
IN or Monaco. could become abso.
IN lutte ruler Of the earth. Practi-
tically, however, such discovery
could probably never be kept secret,
1t would become the property
OF the whole human race. In
stead, OF m king war moro ter
ible, 1t might force an end to all physical
warfare. why? Simply because such n
ower, if ruthlessly used for destruction,
you'd be capable of annihilating the whole
+ humanity, rendering the human race
Xtinct and reducing the globe itself to a
haired and lifeless mass.
Tho first hint that all nature was vast
torehouse OF electrical energy came with
he discovery of radium few years ago
y Madame Cure in Paris. According to
'obert Kennedy Duncan, noted American
the heat evolved by the radium
is over three million five hun
red thousand times greater than that let
,osc by any known chemical reaction or
Y the hottest fires. and Mr.. Duncan says,
l. is impossible in the light OF other re-
ent discoveries to como to any other con-
fusion than that there is locked no IN
III. TIE SO.CALLED ELEMENTS OF
aATTER AN ENORMOUS SIMILAR
STORE OF ENERGY"
Professor Duncan further points out that
the energy whence we now obtain our
manufacturing power, whether derived
hemical reaction. Is absolutely insignifi-
ant compared with the limitless energy
,cked up within the atoms themselves.
vlth the continuous acceleration of scien.
lie research, where the year Of the pres
MT counts for cycle of former time. there
M come day when men will look with
lingled horror and amusement at the
urning OF coal and wood, and will date
rosress from the time when they began
understand inter-atomic energy"
The Scientific American one OF the most
'nservative scientific journals in the world,
eclares that chemists already are making
rogress in their attack upon this most
poctacular and inexhaustible OF all sug-
ested sources OF energy, and then sums
p as follows:
THE first announcement Of the enor.
ous potential energy stored up in par
Gle Of radium produced state OF mind
HIGH varied from M lid incpedulity
}, vehement denial But scientific author
hot
distances which send forth ceaseless
reams OF energy and do it with loss
substance so small that 1t takes the
ost delicate processes OF the laboratory
} measure the change. -
ut has long been suspected that there
as vast storehouse of energy locked up
the atom and the production of radium
It the seal of positive scientific proof
pom the theory
But moro than that, it has revealed to
anKind the amazing, the tremendous fact
lat we are in the presence Of store
ouse OF energy SO vast and so intensive
lat ne who shall first unlock the door will
:. possessed OF power in the presence OF
hich all the vast potentialities of the
orld's store OF coal, oil and water-power
i'll literally sink into insignifcance.
"In the search for material power, we
ave at one time or another considered
)al ana oil, natural gas, the energy of the
,rths rotation and that OF tho wind, the
de and the waves. We have also been
I'D that the solar heat that beats upon
lie Sahara desert represents. in energy.
lie equivalent daily of six billions tons OF
'al. But none Of these possibilities is so
.tractive as that OF atomic energy"