A Wonderful Substance

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 38.

A Wonderful Substance.

One of the most interesting discoveries of these later days is the finding of that wonderful metal, radium. The total mass thus far gathered, the September Cosmopolitan tells us, is only about one-thirtieth of an ounce, and it cost to collect it $10,000; the cost of producing an ounce, it is estimated, would exceed $300,000. It possesses the power of sending forth, at the velocity of over 60,000 miles a second, a constant stream of luminous particles, and that without any diminution of substance. We are told that “Science, with all the resources of its entrance upon the twentieth century, is at a loss to understand either the derivation or preservation of this energy. . . . The question arises, What renews this immense reservoir of power which is being eternally thrown out, yet with the store never dissipated?” It is said that the wonderful properties it possesses would make the gathering of it by the government cheap enough at $300,000 an ounce. That already gathered came from pitchblende, or uraninite. Glass brought into contact with it is permanently colored brown or of a violet tint. Oxygen is by it changed into ozone. Its brilliancy is such that a small portion would send forth a light so intense that the eyes and even the person would have to be protected from its power; and this power, they declare, has been with it from the beginning of creation. Surely it would seem that such things, as well as a multitude of the more common things of life, would lead men to see that God is back of all this. For aught we know, the suns of the universe may be supplied with radium. We read in Eze. 28:16 of the apostate angel: “Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” “I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” What were these “stones of fire?”