Evening star., 1938-08-30
BY THOMAS r. HENRY,
Star Staff Correspondent.

CAMBRIDGE. England Thy maiD -
Imagine a billiard table a millionth
of a millionth of an inch in diane.
ter
Imagine billiard balls each weighing
about 100000, ,00O. 900 ,000, 900 ,0OO,-
000ths of gram. from l to 90 Of
them, punched together on this table
Imagine-but of course it is impos-
sible-each billiard ball being as big
as the whole bunch of them and yet
being included in the bunch.
Such Is the picture of sciences new
frontier on the borders of matter-a
frontier lying almost as far beyond
the atom as the atom itself is beyond
the borders of sensory experience. 1t
is the picture drawn for physicists
here by Prof. Nils Bohr of the Uni
versity of Copenhagen, whose original
picture Of the atom as a miniature
solar system. presented more than 30
years ago. forms one Of the outstand-
ing landmarks of scientific progress
during the last century
But the atom now is ancient his
tory. especially with the discovery Of
forces millions of times greater than
gravity within the atomic nucleus by
DR.. M. A. Tuve Of the Carnegie In
stitutton OF Washington and mathe-
matical explanations advanced by DR..
Georges Gamov of George Washington
University, both of whom are cited by
DR.. Bohr in drawing his new picture.
The frontier now has receded to the
nucleus of the atom, which in the
original theory of DR.. Bohr was like the
dimensions. 1t is supposedly a tight
ly packed bunch of extremely heavy
elementary particles, protons and neu-
trons-heavy, that is. as sextril-
lionth of gram is heavy, and is is
very heavy indeed in this new border
land.
Medicinal Alchemy.
1t has quite suddenly become a
very important region. for by disturb
ing the billiard balls" in the pack
by shooting against them other billiard
balls of comparative size the ancient
dreams Of the alchemists of changing
one element into another. as lead into
gold. can be realized on a very ex-
pensive and limited scale OF more
practical importance scores of new
radioactive substances. like radium
and uranium, can be made which may
prove of great value in medicine. At
the Cavandish Laboratory here many
OF these are being created by the
propulsion of other billiard balls
against the punches of billiard balls
by heavy artillery of 100000 volt
tubes inclosed in rooms with walls Of
concrete l8 inches thick to keep dan
gerous incidental radiation from the
outside world.
But up to date the artilerists have
been firing their projectiles in the
dark, without any comprehensive pic
ture Of the target or what happens
when hit is scored. 1t was to provide
such picture that the genius of Prof.
intellects of his age, was directed and
he says, after his mathematical studies
were completed the nearest analogy he
could find was with a toy sold for
children couple Of Christmases ago
in Copenhagen department store
Since then he has had the toy i'm
proved, and he demonstrated it before
nearly thousand fascinated physicists
here the other day.
Analogy Is Given.
One trouble with transmutation and
disintegration experiments in sub
atomic physics has been that nobody
knew exactly what was going to happen
in any particular case. Prof. Bohr's
toy shows why this is so. The billiard
ball from the outside is rolled down
an inclined plane toward the table,