Evening star., 1939-02-05
Splitting Of Atoms Revives
Widest Dreams of Scientists
Binding Universe Together Could Be
Tapped and Controlled.
Bv Thomas X. Henry.

rather pessimistic. The day might come,
they said, when some adventurous soul
would find way to break nucleus wide
open, but neither he nor anybody else
would ever know anything about it be-
cause the instant it happened the earth
would be destroyed by the force OF the
explosion. This, it appears, was trlf1e
exaggerated.
Force Measured.
About four years ago three men in
quiet laboratory on the edge OF Rock
Greek Park for the first time succeeded
in measuring this strange force. The
means they used are quite complicated
and of no particular consequence here.
They found that when a proton or a
neutron came within an almost infin-
itesimally small distance of another body
of the same size the mysterious force
became operative and that it Was-the
figure is too vast to mean much of any,
thing-about 1000 900 900 900, 900 900 0OO,-
1000 times the force of gravity acting
on masses of similar size.
Now there was way to get at this
force, trifling amount of it. Atoms
could be bombarded with neutrons. Once
in very great while a neutron. travel
ing with terrific speed would hit nu-
cleus, possibly knock out one OF its outer
particles, or be itself embodied IN the
compact mass. whereupon another neu-
tron or proton would be dislodged.
Sometimes, in fact, it happened spon-
taneously.
At the top of the table of elements is
uranium. 1t weighs trif1e more than
238 times as much as an atom OF hydro
gen. Around its heavy nucleus revolve
90 planetary electrons. The protons and
neutrons are packed SO densely in the
nucleus that, for some reason or other
they form an unstable combination
Every once in while an atom of uran-
ium will explode, shooting out into the
atmosphere an alpha particle, about the
same thing as the nucleus Of an atom OF
helium, the sun gas.
Becomes More Unstable.
When this happens the nucleus be-
comes more unstable than ever. 1t Is
changed from uranium to radium. The
radium shoots out particles and pho
tons until it finally degenerates into
a kind of lead There is a lot of power
behind these explosions of both uran-
ium and radium-about 100000 volts
in the case of the former and running
as high as 100000 volts for the latter.
The energy is extremely penetrating
which is why radium is used to treat
cancer.
Three years ago Prof. Enrico Fermi
of the University of Rome bombarded
uranium with streams of neutrons with
terrific energies behind them. He found
that now and then one of these would
stick in the nucleus temporarily and
that the subsequent behavior of the
substance would be quite different from
that of uranium. 1t was still radio
active-even more intensely so. For
the first time man had made a new
element DR.. Fermi got the Nobel Prize
for it this year. Laboratories all over
the world got busy. 1t was found that
by the same procedure lots of other
things could be made radioactive
some things very powerfully so. Ordi-
nary table salt was one of them. This
has been, among other things, a great
boon to medicine-hoW great the fu-
ture alone can determine. The work
is still entirely experimental but some
extraordinary results have been pri-
vately reported.
Just Scratching Surface.
But all this Was"just scratching the
surface. Bold prophets predicted that
If physics continued to advance for
another century the way it had for
the past 20 years some great-grand-
son Of scientist now living might
get inside the atom itself.
The thing came last week with dra-
matte suddenness. In Berlin is the
great Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where
have been made some of the outstand-
ing scientific discoveries of the mod
ern world. During the past few years
it has lost some of its best brains
men and women who have made some
of the outstanding intellectual contri-
buttons of their times and are now
homeless wanderers because of the blood
of their fathers and mothers.
One of the staff of the Kaiser Will
helm Institute driven into exile was
the physicist, DR.. Lise Mintner. Through
the years her keen intellect had played
a secondary but important part in out
standing physical accomplishments.
Now she is an old women, broken in
heakh and spirit.
There are still good brains, however,
at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. One
of these is Prof. G.. Hahn, the chemist.
DR.. Mintner had been one of his asso-
ciates. A few weeks ago DR.. Hahn,
working with some of the ekauranium,
the new element originally produced by
DR.. Fermi, observed something which
he couldn't believe. In the residue of
one Of his preparations chemical analysis
showed some of the rare element barium.
He knew 1t hadn't been there in the first
place. The only way it could have gotten
there was out of the ekauranium.
Hahn dreaded making q fool of him
self, for compared with getting barium