GOLD FROM SILVER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2518, 3 June 1909, Page 4

GOLD FROM SILVER.

Sill AYILLIAAi RAMSAY’S EXPERI AIENTS.

A contributor to the Paris "Alatin 3 reproduces in that journal the points of a remarkable conversation he recently had with Sir William Ramsay at Clermont-Ferrand. The writer gives a. fascinating account of the experiments on which the great investigator is at present engaged. "You know that last year.” said Sir William Ramsay, ;‘I showed that the emanation of radium changed into elium or noon according to circumstances. In the presence of a solution of copper and yields of another metal of the same series, but of an interior atomic gravity, lithium, then potassium and sodium. The emanation itself is transformed into neon and argon. Wc have thus realised the transmutation of several soft metals or alkalis. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century we have been accustomed to regard atoms as eternal and immutable. You see that is not tlie case.”

When asked whether the contrary process could not be accomplished—that is to say. raising a metal in the scale instead" of degrading it, and so realising the dream, hitherto considered absurd, of transmuting silver into gold —Sir William said: "I do not- think that the emanation of radium can only degrade- metals. The emanation only acts by its tremendous energy. It may just as well construct a.s disintegrate, and I have reasons for believing that,it. will not be impossible to obtain gold from silver. Air present experiments are in that direction.” Proceeding to explain tlie various changes produced by the action of radium oil silver. Sir W illiam Ramsay pointed out that, according to Alendol- / oil’s formulae, in which all the simple bodies are ranged in the order of their 4 atomic gravity, between silver and gold J two elements have thei ’daces—one known, the other unknown. The ouo< which is known is caesium: the unknown clement has been named in advance argentaurum. Silver, when submitted ttTthe emanation, may therefore / be transmuted into eoesiuni;, argentaurum. or gold, "it would not be a lucrative or remunerative way of making gold,”’ Sir William smilingly added, “but it would be a great victory fortJJ. science.”