Evening star., 1936-12-13
Atoms
Continued From First Page.)

their importance.
It Is the force that binds together
the particles that compose the nuclei
of atoms. 1t is as yet unnamed. One
of the names suggested for it Is "su-
per-gravity."
There have been many suggestions
IN the past half century that some
day man would be able to tap the
binding energy" of atoms-postulated
to exist but the nature Of which was
unknown-and thus have at his dis
posal a power compared to which the
sum total from all other sources Of
power would be inconsequential. 1t is
this power which DR.. Tuve and his
associates have isolated for the first
time He expressed his earnest con-
viction yesterday. however. that this
power will remain forever beyond hu-
man reach. At least, any method Of
tapping it is now unimaginable.
Not only have DIR. Tuve and his
associates first isolated this force, but
their experiments have revealed for
the first time the real nature Of the
atom-the fundamental building
block of creation. They also are able
to explain for the first time the SEEM
ingly inexhaustible energy Of the sun
and the stars
Understanding of the nature Of the
force requires q summary Of the most
recent views of the nature Of atoms
They are particles so inf1nitesi-
mally small that from 80 to 10 millions
of them could be laid along . line
an inch long.
Each atom, in turn, Is made up of
smaller particles, of various sorts
arranged in a system. Until 1882 only
two of these were known, the proton
and the electron. The former carried
one charge of positive electricity, the
latter one charge of negative cleo
tricity. The proton was vastly heavier
than the electron, but at the same
time much smaller.
Arrangement Depicted.
A picture was built up of the ar
rangement of these two kinds of par
ticles in the atom. The protons were
supposed to be packed together in
nucleus, together with a varying num-
Der of electrons. Other electrons re-
volved around this nucleus in orbits.
The most frequent comparison was
with the solar system-the nucleus
taking the place of the sun and the
revolving electrons of the planets.
Distances in this hypothetical atom
were comparable to the distances be-
tween the objects in the suns sys-
tenn.
BY the general public this picture
was accepted naively as q representa-
ton Of fact. BY physicists it was
accepted purely rs an hypothesis, be-
cause they could construct no better
picture, but they kept q good many
mental reservations. The solar sys-
tenn atom" would not stand up under
rigid analysis One great dificulty
was to explain why the protons in
the nucleus stick together SO tightly
when, by the laws of electricity, they
should be repelling each other.
The physicist could only put big
x there. Some force must be operat-
Liz tklaL k1C AIlCW uOOut.
had little hope of discovering any,
thing about 1t. 1t was recalled yester-
day that when the Terrestrial Mag
netism High Voltage Laboratory was
established here 10 years ago the find-
ing of this force was one Of the OBJ
jectives.
When Sir Isaac Newton first pro-
mulgated the law Of gravity early in
the eighteenth century he expressed
IL in what seemed to be, for 200 years,
the basic and invariable law Of ma
ture. The symbol Ira was perhaps
the most momentous mark ever set
on paper. It meant briefly that every
particle in the universe was attracting
every other particle In the universe
by . force directly proportional to
their masses and inversely propor-
tional to the square Of their distance
apart.
It explained not only why the