Page:Radio-active substances.djvu/80

 gradually, and a month afterwards radio-activity may still be detected.

Since the beginning of our researches, M. Curie and I have, by heating pitchblende, extracted a strongly radioactive gas, but, as in the preceding experiment, the activity of this gas finally completely vanished.

We could discern no new ray in the spectrum of this gas; this was therefore not a case of a new radio-active gas, and we understood later that it was the phenomenon of induced radio-activity.

Thus, for thorium, radium, and actinium induced radioactivity is progressively propagated through the gases, from the radiating body to the walls of the enclosure containing it, and the exciting principle is carried away with the gas itself, when the latter is extracted from the enclosure.

When the radio-activity of radium compounds is measured by the electrical method by means of the apparatus of Fig. 1, the air between the plates is itself radio-active; however, on passing a current of air between the plates, there is no observable lowering of the intensity of the current, which proves that the radio-activity distributed in the space between the plates is of little account in comparison with that of the radium itself in the solid state.

It is quite otherwise with thorium. The irregularities which I observed in determining the radio-activity of the thorium compounds arose from the fact that at this point I was working with a condenser open to the air; the least air current caused a considerable change in the intensity of the current, because the radio-activity dispersed in the space in the vicinity of the thorium is considerable as compared with the radio-activity of the substance.

This effect is still more marked in the case of actinium. A very active compound of actinium appears much less active when a current of air is passed over the substance.

The radio-active energy is therefore contained in the gas in a special form. Mr. Rutherford suggests that radioactive bodies generate an emanation or gaseous material which carries the radio-activity. In the opinion of M. Curie and myself, the generation of a gas by radium is a supposition which is not so far justified. We consider the emanation as radio-active energy stored up in the gas in a form hitherto unknown.

A solid body, which has been excited by radium in an enclosed space for a sufficient length of time, and which has