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Show WOULD BLOW THE EARTH AND ALL TO PIECES Scientist Tells of Latent Power in Liberated Atom of Matter LONDON, Oct. 11 By the Associated As-sociated press. 1 By the liberation of the atom man may some day have under his control a force which will perform for him the entire work of the world, but If it gets beyond his control it may blow the earth and all its inhabitants to smithereens1 Dr. Aston of Cambridge said In a lecture delivered recently before the members mem-bers of the British association But the chances of such a catastrophe are practically negligible, ho explained ex-plained Dr. Aston opened his address with a description of the Infinite minuteness minute-ness of the atom. "If a tiny hob-were hob-were made "In the side of an evacuated evacu-ated light bulb." he said, so that the molecules of air could paw in :i a rate of 1.000,000 a second it would take 100.000.000 years before the bulb was full, and there are two atoms In each molecule of air ' EL1CCTRICAL P ARTICLES Dr. Aston told how Professor Iluth-erford Iluth-erford had discovered t li n t all atoms 'were simply different combinations of 'electricity. The positive particles I were cemented together by, the negative nega-tive particles. Tables, houses, chairs, motor cars in fact all animate and Inanimate substances .Including man j himself were composed simply of electricity: I "What we know as a lump of coal." the speaker declared, "is simply an Incomprehensibly large number of electrical particles clustering together. If these particles could he liberated and controlled, they would provide vastly more power than would bo 'needed to run all the machinery that man ever could devlsi "Profes-sor Rutherford," said Dr. Aston, "succeeded in arranging a collision col-lision between the central portions of tWO atoms. The result was the transmutation trans-mutation of the atoms I"10 entirely different forms of matter ""The possibility of such transmutation transmuta-tion tn any scale Is of enormous important im-portant e. If the amount of hydrogen which roes to constitute a tablespoon of water were tran-muted Into helium the energy liberated would be 200,000 kllovvat hours one-si-v enth of the total amount of electricity used in London In a day for llnliting and power pow-er purposes. 'Th'- possibility has been discussed.'" dis-cussed.'" said lr. Aston, "that this en -erir. when first liberated would be out of human control In that case, If all the hydrogen pn earth were detonated de-tonated into space, the successful experiment ex-periment voi,!, I,,- published throug-out throug-out the entire universe as the birth of a new star. The probability of this catastrophe," added ir Aston, "Is prai ' hall v negligible ' ' |