The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-10
SEE ARTIFICIAL GOLD AS REALITY
 AFTER LONG TIME
But It Costs Two Million Dollars A Pound To
 Make 1t

The claim or UT. AuOlpn Mletne OI the Berlin Technical high school that he has succeeded in making artificial gold is now accepted in well-informed circles as credible and authentic, writes B. J. Beck in the Detroit News.
 The dream of the alchemists has at last come true; a baser element has been turned into the precious yellow metal. Dr. Miethe discovered that by the introduction of a certain amount Oi energy from the outside, the mercury atom undergoes decomposition which results in the production of gold ant helium.
 Experiments with an electric lamI filled with mercury vapor, according to Dr. Miethe, destroyed the intrinsic stability of the mercury and by slow process caused its partial decomposition into gold.
 Although Dr. Miethe is of unques tioned authority in scientific circles the discovery seemed so incredible, even to him, that the experiment was re- peated again and again, always with the same result.
 But holders of gold bonds and those easily worried people who might be prone to fear that our whole currency system will topple. plunging the world into panic may be reassured by the statement of Dr. Miethe that the cost of making artificial gold is more than two million dollars a pound. No eco homie significance attaches to the dis coyery for the time being. though the scientific aspects are revolutionary. Un- til some method is discovered that will turn out mercury-gold cheaply, a SIG gold piece will retain its present value
 German Scientists Interested
 Some German scientists think that perfection of the method eventually will give cheap gold. This result, they hazard, will be gained by combining with the technique of Dr. Miethe, the process of another man who has de veloped superior apparatus. but who did not succeed in making gold.
 About ten years ago, Hugo Lehman, noted German engineer, constructed an electric smelting furnace in which he was able to dissolve iron, aluminium, sodium and other metals into their iron and with the parts formed several new clements. He was able to make real diamonds from wOlframite, though the cost was very high.
 Beside the Lohman furnace, the 1fiethe arc lamp is crude. To make gold, Dr. Miethe passed an electric current through a mercury lamp for from 20 to 200 hours. Only infini- tesimal particles of mercury were trans formed. The contention now made is that the Lohman furnace would give the same result much more quickly and efficiently.
 To disintegrate the atoms of six pounds of mercury in Lohman's furnace, it is asserted would require only ten minutes. NIiethe-figured the cost of mercury and current used in his trans mutation experiments at an equivalent of $2, ,165,0OO a pound.
 The old alchemists believed they could transmute one basic substance into another by the application of the philosophers stone" or other manip. ulation. When scientific chemistry be- gan to be developed, this idea was ridi- culed. The chemists were positive that all matter could be reduced to ''ele- ments," such as oxygen, iron, lead, etc., which they asserted to be basic and irreducible. Oxygen, gold, iron, etc. could not be split up they were sure i; these clements were fundamental.
 Then Lord Kelvin and Sir Ernest Rutherford succeeded in breaking up atoms by bombarding them with ra- diEm emanations upset the ruling theo- rjes and showed that the alchemists were not as foolish as they seemed to the generations which followed them. Soon it began to be agreed that the chemical elements are not fixed.
 ''To tear down, or break down, the atomic structure, and then to rebuild it in such a way that it becomes an atom of a different substance-that Is the problem of the transmutatiOn Ot matter" Giuseppe FacciOli, noted elec- trician of Pittsfield, Mass, explained. ''And that is the problem of the an- cient alch smists, put in modern words. To break down the structure of the atom, to change the number of cleo tronS in the atom, that thing has been done once or twice by bombarding the atom with terrific concentrated ener- gy. But to rebuild that broken down structure into an atom of some other form of matter-ah, there is the prob lem that has baffled science.
 But I believe it will bel believe this actually will be done! It may still be far away-perhaps hundreds of years but the big thing is, that it may nc lcnger be regarded as simply drean.