From the January 5, 1929 issue
A.A.A.S. ELECTS
At the recent New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Robert Andrews Millikan, director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, was named president of the Association for the ensuing year.
Dr. Millikan, recipient of the Nobel prize for his pre-eminent work in physics, has been most conspicuously before the public eye lately because of his researches on the highly penetrating short-wave radiations which have been given the popular name "cosmic rays." To physicists, however, he is known even better as a versatile and successful worker in the fields of electricity, radiant energy, and the newer atomic mechanics. He received his training at Oberlin, Columbia, Berlin, and Gottingen. Until he went to his present post in 1921 he was professor of physics at the University of Chicago.
ELEMENTS' DECAY DESCRIBED
How the actual disintegration of one element to another, the goal sought in vain by the ancient alchemists, has been found to be continually occurring without human aid, and has opened a new domain in science, was explained by Prof. A.A. Noyes. Prof. Noyes is the director of the Gates Chemical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Thirty years ago, said Dr. Noyes, about a dozen of the 89 chemical elements had not been discovered. Today all are known except three. Then atoms were supposed to look like small solid balls and to be indestructible. Today they are known to resemble miniature solar systems. Some, like those of radium, are found to be disintegrating spontaneously into simpler elements, while others can be made to disintegrate by bombarding them with helium particles.
Helium itself, now prepared in quantity large enough to fill huge dirigibles, was discovered in 1895. Since that time, it has been found that helium nuclei are probably building stones in the construction of the other atoms.
Dr. Noyes showed by ingenious models how helium nuclei, themselves first formed of protons, which are hydrogen nuclei, and electrons, unite with one another and with more protons and electrons to produce the nuclei of more complex atoms.
The natural breaking up of radium with emission of helium into a series of elements which finally forms lead, all of which has been discovered within the past 30 years, was cited by Dr. Noyes as further proof of the way atoms are built.
"SUPER-UNIVERSES" LARGEST OBJECTS
Large as our galaxy, or "universe" of stars, is—perhaps fifteen hundred million million miles across—there are still larger things scattered around through space. These are the "super-universes," or galaxies of galaxies, said Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory.
Outside our own galaxy, there are thousands of independent ones. Some of these appear as spiral nebulae, with a definite pinwheel-like structure. Others, like the two Magellanic clouds, visible to the unaided eye from southern countries, are more irregular. Dr. Shapley himself has demonstrated that the two Magellanic clouds are at vast distances, so far that they are definitely outside our own universe. At the Mount Wilson Observatory, Dr. Erwin Hubble has made measurements of the distance of two of the closest of the spiral nebulae. He has proven that they also are outside our galaxy and are made up, like our own, of a vast number of stars.
Copyright 1999 Science Service
