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Updated: June 28, 2025
To quote the words of Sir J.J. Thompson, "The transparency of bodies to Roentgen rays, to cathode rays, to the rays emitted by radioactive substances, the quality of the secondary radiation emitted by the different elements, are all determined by the atomic weight of the element." Just recently we have had opened up before us a still more intimate inner-circle view of the composition of matter.
It is not possible to give a complete table which should, as it were, represent the genealogical tree of the various radioactive substances. Several authors have endeavoured to do so, but in a premature manner; all the affiliations are not at the present time yet perfectly known, and it will no doubt be acknowledged some day that identical states have been described under different names.
The periods of most of the radioactive substances have been calculated, that of uranium being very long. The calculated period of radium is 2,500 years, while that of polonium is only 202 days, and that of niton 5.6 days. The discussion of the details of these theories would be unprofitable.
As a last thought I had, however, cleaned the mattress of the bed and the cracks and crevices in the brass bars. Tests of that dust showed it to be extremely radioactive. I had the dust dissolved, by a chemist who understands that sort of thing, recrystallised, and the radium salts were extracted from the refuse.
In spite of uncertainties which are not yet entirely removed, it cannot be denied that many experiments render it probable that in radioactive bodies we find ourselves witnessing veritable transformations of matter. Professor Rutherford, Professor Soddy, and several other physicists, have come to regard these phenomena in the following way.
"This twelfth series is interesting. So far only radium, thorium, and uranium are generally known. We know that the radioactive elements are constantly breaking down, and one often hears uranium, for instance, called the 'parent' of radium. Radium also gives off an emanation, and among its products is helium, quite another element.
The latest theory is that the alpha particle is in fact an atom of helium, and that the final transformation product of radium and the other radioactive substances is lead. Cf. Rutherford, op. cit. passim.
It is a typical organic compound, one of the metal radical type, and contains one atom of thorium. This is a bit radioactive, as you know, and Dick thinks that this may account in part for its ability to suspend animation.
Ordinarily the air between the gold leaves is insulating. Bringing something radioactive near them renders the air a good conductor and the leaves fall under the radiation." "Wonderful!" I exclaimed, marveling at the delicacy of it. "Take radium water," he went on, "sufficiently impregnated with radium emanations to be luminous in the dark, like that water of Denison's. It would do the same.
Certainly we can only bow before an hypothesis which enables us to group in the same synthesis all the discoveries on electric discharges and on radioactive substances, and which leads to a satisfactory theory of optics and of electricity; while by the intermediary of radiating heat it seems likely to embrace shortly the principles of thermodynamics also.
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