But radium is not the most mysterious of the elements but the least so.
It is giving out the secret that the other elements have kept. It
suggests to us that all the other elements in proportion to their weight
have concealed within them similar stores of energy. Astronomers have
long dazzled our imaginations by calculating the horsepower of the
world, making us feel cheap in talking about our steam engines and
dynamos when a minutest fraction of the waste dynamic energy of the
solar system would make us all as rich as millionaires. But the heavenly
bodies are too big for us to utilize in this practical fashion.
And now the chemists have become as exasperating as the astronomers, for
they give us a glimpse of incalculable wealth in the meanest substance.
For wealth is measured by the available energy of the world, and if a
few ounces of anything would drive an engine or manufacture nitrogenous
fertilizer from the air all our troubles would be over. Kipling in his
sketch, "With the Night Mail," and Wells in his novel, "The World Set
Free," stretched their imaginations in trying to tell us what it would
mean to have command of this power, but they are a little hazy in their
descriptions of the machinery by which it is utilized.
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