Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/24

18 activity lasts, should be of the same order of magnitude, but in the case of uranium and thorium the present rate of heat emission will probably continue, on an average, for a period of about 1000 million years.

There has been considerable difference of opinion in regard to the fundamental question of the origin of the energy spontaneously emitted from the radioactive bodies. Some have considered that the atoms of the radio-elements act as transformers of borrowed energy. The atoms are supposed, in some way, to abstract energy from the surrounding medium and to emit it again in the form of the characteristic radiations. Another theory which has found favor with a number of physicists supposes that the energy is derived from the radio-atoms themselves and is released in consequence of their disintegration. The latter theory involves the conception that the atoms of the radio-elements contain a great store of latent energy, which only manifests itself when the atom breaks up. There is no direct evidence in support of the view that the energy of the radio-elements is derived from external sources, while there is much indirect evidence against it. Some of this evidence will now be considered. There is now no doubt that the α and β rays consist of particles projected with great speed. In order that the α particle may acquire the velocity with which it is expelled, it can be calculated that it would be necessary for it to move freely between two points differing in potential by about five million volts. It is very difficult to imagine any mechanism, which could suddenly impress such an enormous velocity on one of the parts of an atom. It seems much more reasonable to suppose that the aa and β particles were originally in rapid motion in the atom and, for some reason, escaped from the atomic system with the velocity they possessed at the instant of their release. There is now undeniable evidence that radioactivity is always accompanied by the production of new kinds of active matter. Some sort of chemical theory is thus required to explain the facts whether the view is taken that the energy is derived from the atom itself or from external sources. The 'external' theory of the origin of the energy was initially advanced to explain only the heat emission of radium. We have seen that this is undoubtedly connected with the expulsion of α particles from the different disintegration products of radium, and that the radium itself only supplies one quarter of the total heat emission, the rest being derived from the emanation and its further products. On such a theory it is necessary to suppose that in radium there are a number of different active substances, whose power of absorbing external energy dies away with the time, at different but definite rates. This still leaves the fundamental difficulty of the origin of these radioactive