16 SCIENCE AND LIFE 



So radium was discovered, and it has been 

 remarked that the future race will date the coming 

 in of its kingdom from this discovery, mainly due to 

 a woman. 



Through the wealth of new discovery that 

 followed the recognition and investigation of natural 

 radioactivity, we have but to pursue still the single 

 connected thread which science has shot through 

 the whole fabric of human history. Rays of a 

 fundamentally new character are given out by 

 radium, of various kinds and intense interest, and 

 a thousand new phenomena make themselves mani- 

 fest, but like galley slaves and fertilisers, waterfalls 

 and food, they must here be brought into line from 

 the single view point. Their energy is of the same 

 category and obeys the same laws as the forms 

 which before have nourished and embellished life. 

 Not yet, at least, has science got outside the 

 jurisdiction of that universal legislation, whatever 

 may be its ultimate aspirations. 



The energy evolved by radium spontaneously, 

 however new and wonderful it may be, is yet 

 measurable in current coin. In a single day it 

 approaches in magnitude the energy evolved from 

 a similar weight of any materials undergoing the 

 most energetic chemical reactions known. In a year 

 it evolves about 150 times as much energy as would 

 be evolved in the complete combustion of the same 

 weight of coal. Yet in the fifteen years that have 

 elapsed since the discovery no measurable diminu- 

 tion of this rate of emission has been observed. 

 If science is right, this emission will steadily 

 decrease as the centuries roll by. But it is still 

 possible to put a value on the total amount of 

 energy a given weight of radium will furnish before 

 the outflow comes to an end. It is about a third of 

 a million times as great as would be evolved in the 



