The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1945-08-09
Debunker
CONTINUED from Page One)

tiiAiSt w ~
age.
They would not need to in
crease the percentage to snow
the effects reported from Japan.
Uranium atoms, it will be re-
membered, split in two, to pro-
duce the tonic explosive power.
Splitting in two a thing that
scientists call fission, is entirely
different than having the whole
atom explode. That single split
is all that ever has be IN report
ed as happening to uranium
atoms.
The world is quite safe until
far more than that kind of a
split can be attained. The entire
atom would have to come apart
TO make the 20-mile blow-up of
the Empire State Building with
a pound.
WIDE FIELD
Any of the other 81 different
kinds of atoms, such as gold,
iron, lead, iodine or carbon
could cause a comparable deS-
truction, per pound, if they
could be made to blow up COM
pletely.
But on the evidence to date.
scientists have been unable to
get a single one of the other
atoms even to split, much less
blow up completely.
BY the scientific records,
uranium is the one atom of all
the 90 likely even to split. 1t
is the biggest one of all, and 1t
is unstable. AS the atoms get
smaller, they seem more stable.
They are harder to damage.
They only give off chips and
rays when strong rays hit them.
Progress will be made both
with uranium and other atoms,
both for self-protection Of Amer
lea and for the dreams of atomic
power. But the progress along
those lines, as told by Secretary
Stimson, is expected to take
many years. Even the progress
that bring sman the millennium
of atomic power, does not mean
anywhere near enough explo--
sive energy to destroy the
world.
ATMOSPHERE ANGLE
Another public worry Is des-
troying the atmosphere, and
making the face of the earth ra-
dioactive, like live radium, 50
that people who stay around
bombed area will die slowly of
X-ray burns, or more quickly
of neutron burns, which are
highly lethal.
1t is a fact that a huge ex-
plosion of energy creates a lit
tie bit of this artificial radium.
But that is nothing to worry
about. Because every person on
the face of the earth is con-
stantly under the fire of radiurn
rays. 1t comes naturally from
the earth, the air, and particu-
larly from the walls of great
buildings.
A Geiger counter, the instru-
ment that clicks each time a
radium ray hits it, will chatter
nearly all the time, most any
where. But those rays do no
harm. Perhaps because human
beings bodies over countless
cons have become hardened to
this natural bombardment. More
likely the reason for immunity
is hte fact that it takes a great
volume Of radium rays to do
any harm.
IMPROBABLE
Prospects are most unlikely
that an atomic bomb will cause
a dangerous increase in radium
and like rays from the earth,
these artificially caused rays,
moreover, do not last long, most
of them stopping after q few
hours or a few days.
They seldom are harmful any,
how if you are the distance of
a ten-foot pole away from the
particle giving off the rays.
Man, it was said today, has
learned how to destroy the at
mosphere. The reason for this
being. again, the fear of making
the air radioactive. The answer
is, first that the air already is
somewhat radioactive, made so
by radon gases. and second, ra-
dioactive air is not destroyed.
You couldn't tell the difference
between 1t and ordinary air,
without a Geiger counter.
FEAR OF UNKNOWN
Today's filters come not from
actual facts but from the un-
known. It is not unknown that
atomic explosions can destroy
everything, even the greatest
stars. But how to make such an
explosion Is just as unknown
today as ever.
The star explosions are the
novae, or new stars. One ap-
pears each two or three years.
Where no star had been visible
a bright new one flares briefly