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Frederick Soddy: The Scientist as Prophet – Professor Mansel Davies [May 1991]

The richness of Soddy's foresight is almost embarrassing. A critical consideration of the following quotations now given may cause the reader to ask whether any scientist has offered so many major anticipations in so short a time.  A volume by Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium, giving an admirably clear exposition of its subject, first appears in 1909. In it one finds:

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The 'physical impossibility' of one era can become the common place of the next... No theory can claim a universal application.
The idea which arises.., is perhaps, that matter is breaking down and its energy being evolved and degraded in one part of a cycle of evolution, and in another part, still unknown to us, the matter is being again built up.

[energy recycling, matter, form, function]

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In the face of circumstantial evidence.., a race which could transmute matter could transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole world one smiling Garden of Eden. Possibly they could explore the outer realms of space, emigrating for more favourable worlds as the superfluous today emigrate to more favourable continents.

[Climate change and the race to Mars]

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In Sir J. J. Thomson's model atom.., it had one very great and suggestive merit, for it showed that the electrons would tend to arrange themselves in rings

... The outer ring of electrons seems for all atoms to try and conform to a certain standard number. [1]
... When the number of electrons in the outer ring exceeds a certain limit.., a complete new inner ring of eight [7 plus one] electrons is formed. [2]
... The chemical properties, however, depend only on the outermost ring directly and the inner rings exert a subordinate effect. [3].

[Map of the Egg, elements, the planets]

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