176 THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. 



is 100,000 times less than it, theoretically, should be. 

 The source of radium is, therefore, still an open question, 

 though we may be fairly sure that its generation is con- 

 stant from some source or other, and that its decay will be 

 balanced 'by a constant fresh supply. 



The amount of energy locked up in a gram of innocent 

 looking radium bromide and appearing as heat on the dis- 

 integration of the whole gram, calculates out to about one 

 billion calories, a prodigious quantity of energy. This 

 energy is not the total amount contained in the radium. 

 It is only that portion which becomes manifest on the de- 

 composition of the radium into its disintegration products. 

 If the gram of radium could be wholly dissociated into 

 corpuscles, the energy let loose would greatly exceed the 

 above amount. 



But radio-active substances in their normal character as 

 chemical elements are in no way different from the inactive 

 elements. Radium is like barium and strontium; uranium 

 is like tungsten and molybdenum ; polonium is like bismuth ; 

 and thorium is like titanium. If it were not for their 

 bizarre property of radio-activity they would be in no 

 sense remarkable. Hence, it is impossible for us to come 

 to any other conclusion than that there is locked up in 

 all the so-called "elements" of matter an enormous 

 store of energy which, except in those elements of heaviest 

 atomic weight like radium and thorium, remains latent and 

 unknown. Professor Thomson as the result of his calcula- 

 tions, concludes that a gram of hydrogen has within it 

 energy sufficient to lift a million tons through a height con- 

 siderably exceeding one hundred yards; and that since the 

 amount of energy is proportional to the number of corpus- 

 cles comprising the atom of the element, the energy of the 

 other elements such as sulphur, iron, or lead must enor- 



