In Madison

Laymen who dramatize in their imaginations the great discoveries of science, would find the actual moment of such discoveries dull enough. One more figure added to a string of decimals, a barely perceptible change of color in a test tube, a splinter of light measured against the angle of a graphed mirror--and the thing is done. The laboratory worker wipes his hands on his apron and goes home to write a paper for the next meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Last week that notable body, convening in Madison, Wis., listened to various amazing reports.

Ray. Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan of the California Institute of Technology told the Academy about a new ray which he had discovered--a ray which begins in eternity. Born beyond space, in some dim interstellar vestibule behind the gates of the discoverable universe, out of a womb still swollen with gas, perhaps with litters of uncreated stars, the Millikan Ray stabs earthward, traversing aerial shambles strewn with the debris of mutating solar systems, planes where (according to schoolboy definition) parallel lines may meet, and voids in which time, unhinged, spins like a tiny weathervane in an everlasting whirlwind. What bred the ray? The condensation into matter of light and heat given off by distant stars and suns,* suggests Dr. Millikan.

Like the rays of radium, the Millikan Rays, wherever they are present in any quantity, have a sterilizing effect fatal to life. X-rays are absorbed by half an inch of lead. The Millikan Ray will pierce six feet of lead; it is the product of elements uniting with an energy charge 50 times as great as that evolved by any reaction known to the earth.

At one point Dr. Millikan was carrying on his experiments on top of Pike's Peak with featherweight instruments buoyed in air by small balloons; at another time he probed 60 feet deep in a snow-fed lake under the brow of Mount Whitney. Since it would take 10,000,000 volts to reproduce the ray artificially, Dr. Millikan points out that there is little likelihood of his discovery being utilized for some time to come. The Academicians were interested.

Drug. Sufferers from paresis resulting from syphilitic infection may be cured, said Professor A. S. Loevenhart of the University of Wisconsin. Using tryparsamide (an arsenical drug first compounded by the workers of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research and found to be effective in curing sleeping sickness), he restored to their right minds one-third of all the grey-faced, twitching paresis victims upon whom he experimented.

Bacteriophage. Dr. Philip Hadley of the University of Michigan told how he had found in sewage a poison that kills poisons--a bacteriophage, eater of germs. Just as the human body, when fatigued, creates protective white blood-corpuscles to fight off germs, so the veins of the earth, its rivers, tributaries, flowing streams, manufacture this mysterious prophylactic only when they are fouled. Dr. Hadley took it from the sewage-filled water of the Huron River, and declares that it can be procured from the sewage of any large city. It not only purifies the water but it may be used to treat such diseases as typhoid, dysentery, and paratyphoid.

Stars, as they spin, gather up the dust that falls in a glittering sheen through heaven; revolving planets fatten similarly, and of course very slowly, on nebulous flakes which they pick up much as a snowball, rolled down hill, picks up damp snow. The biggest planets fatten fastest. When one is big enough, it will pull the others to it by the force of gravity. Thus, after an incalculable period of time, the little earth may be a dry crumb for Jupiter's eating. Many of the brightest stars were once solar systems. Some day there will be only two bodies in the sky--Jupiter, the Sun. So said Professor W. D. MacMillan of Chicago.

Armored Corn. Dr. J. G. Dickson of Wisconsin told how researchers there have bred corn and wheat that will resist the seedling blight. They noticed that corn grown in warm weather develops a woody armor that no fungus growth can pierce, but corn grown in cold weather wears for its coat only a sticky glue. In big greenhouses, where weather conditions can be produced at will, Dr. Dickson, working with Professor L. R. Jones, bred corn and wheat that will grow their armor even in the cold. This discovery will save farmers millions of dollars. Now they are trying to find an apple that will resist the apple scab.

Speed of Light. Dr. A. A. Michelson, University of Chicago Physicist and President of the Academy of Sciences, declared that he had determined the speed of light within 25 miles a second of its actual velocity by flashing rays back and forth from two mountains in the Sierras.

*The sun dissipates into space each second 10,000,000 tons of matter in the form of light.