Radium. 47 



Early last summer Professor Ramsay discovered that the fresh 

 emanation from radium does not show the helium spectrum, but, 

 with its decay, helium is produced in ever-increasing quantities, 

 and if this very important conclusion is confirmed it will verify 

 Rutherford's idea that radium is being constantly transformed into 

 helium, and a proof will exist that a transmutation of the elements 

 is possible. Assuming the truth of these laboratory results, we 

 find ourselves in presence of quite startling phenomena. 



No one has hithereto observed the transition from one form of 

 matter to another, although everyone knows that such a trans- 

 mutation was the dream of the alchemists. In recent times skilful 

 observers have suspected such changes from spectroscopic details 

 of solar and stellar spectra. Some chemists have maintained the 

 evolution of matter on the strength of Mendelejeff's law that the 

 elements form a kind of family or related series, and suspected 

 that the barriers between the members were not impassible. All 

 this was the speculation of the very boldest ; but in radio-active 

 substances the process appears going on before our eyes. Radium 

 thorium, and uranium are only extreme cases. Atoms of all sorts 

 are reservoirs of energy, and have no guarantee of absolute 

 durability ; and Strutt finds that most ordinary materials are 

 slightly radio-active. If we allow ourselves to use our scientific 

 imagination and to push the electronic theory of the construction 

 of matter to its logical limits we may be witnesses of the spon- 

 taneous disintegration of radium, and we commence to doubt the 

 permanent stability of matter. The chemical atom may, in fact, 

 undergo a transformation, but so slowly that if one million atoms 

 escape per second from a gramme the weight would hardly 

 diminish one milligramme in one century. A well-known scientist 

 says : — " This fatal quality of atomic dissociation appears to be 

 universal, and operates whenever we brush a piece of glass with 

 silk ; it works in the sunshine and raindrops, in lightning and 

 flame ; it prevails in the water fall and stormy sea. Matter is 

 doomed to destruction. Sooner or later it will have dissolved 

 into the formless mist of protyle, and the hour hand of eternity 



