LOW-TEMPERATURE RESEARCHES 





 the people of the land of progress and inventions. 



The principles to be applied are already clearly to 

 hand, thanks largely to the technical workers with low 

 temperatures. It remains now for the practical in- 

 ventors to make the "application to the useful pur- 

 poses of life." The technical scientists, ignoring the 

 example which Rumford and a few others have set, 

 have usually no concern with such uninteresting con- 

 cerns. 



For the technical scientists themselves, however, the 

 low-temperature field is still full of inviting possibilities 

 of a strictly technical kind. The last gas has indeed 

 been liquefied, but that by no means implies the last 

 stage of discovery. With the successive conquest of 

 this gas and of that, lower and lower levels of tempera- 

 ture have been reached, but the final goal still lies well 

 beyond . This is the north pole of the physicist's world , 

 the absolute zero of temperature the point at which 

 the heat- vibrations of matter are supposed to be ab- 

 solutely stilled. Theoretically this point lies 272 be- 

 low the Centigrade zero. With the liquefaction of 

 hydrogen, a temperature of about 253 or 254 

 Centigrade has been reached. So the gap seems not 

 so very great. But like the gap that separated Nansen 

 from the geographical pole, it is a very hard road to 

 travel. How to compass it will be the study of all 

 the low-temperature explorers in the immediate future. 

 Who will first reach it, and when, and how, are ques- 

 tions for the future to decide. 



And when the goal is reached, what will be revealed ? 

 That is a question as full of fascination for the physicist 

 as the north-pole mystery has ever been for the gen- 



69 



