Vigorous Atmosphere

Two new ideas about the upper atmosphere came out during the American Philosophical Society's meeting in Philadelphia last week: 1) that the region is violently turbulent; 2) that it produces cosmic radiations (not to be confused with cosmic rays).

Turbulence. Meteorological balloons, Professor Auguste Piccard's two stratospheric excursions, and high-drifting, icy cirrus clouds indicate that above ten miles winds blow steadily. Experts have been unable to sight any high-floating dust or haze to indicate any contrary condition. They therefore have predicted that if & when man can fly through the stratosphere, his going would be smooth as well as swift. Last week Dr. Charles Pollard Olivier, University of Pennsylvania astronomer, knocked this idea higher than the sky

When the Leonid meteors coursed through the upper air last November, Astronomer Olivier had 14 scattered observers chart the meteor trails. Comparison of data showed the meteors traveling 90 to 142 m. p. h. The faster ones began to glow from atmospheric friction when 84 mi. from earth's surface. At 54 mi. they burned themselves out. Two of the meteors spattered luminescent trains behind them, which Astronomer Olivier's men saw floating 50 to 60 mi. aloft. Wind drove one train upward at an angle of 55 degrees and a speed of 142 m. p. h. Wind drove the other train 90 m. p. h. up 35 degrees. No plane or rocket could maneuver in such mighty drafts.

Cosmic Radiation is one of the major mysteries of the heavens. It accounts for nearly 60% of the light of a moonless night, figures Pieter Johannes van Rhijn, Dutch astronomer. (Stars supply another 25%, permanent auroral glow 15%.) On a moonless spring night residents of northern states can see a concentration of cosmic radiation as a wedge of zodiacal light at the western horizon. In the autumn the light concentrates at the eastern horizon. One theory of the source of zodiacal light supposes that it is sunlight reflected from small bodies or gas molecules. Astronomer Vesto Melvin Slipher of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, has another thought--but he did not elaborate it in his Philadelphia lecture.

Dr. Slipher let the strange, faint light sift through spectroscopes. After 100-hr. exposures he caught blue and violet bands in his spectrographs. Other exposures showed red light in "surprising strength." More recent observations demonstrate that zodiacal light contains the entire spectrum from red to violet. The assumption is that "the strange light originates at some distance above the Earth's surface, in a layer of considerable thickness. The Earth's atmosphere is playing a considerable role in the production of these radiations." The light seems to be a transformation of sunlight (or starlight) rather than a reflection of sunlight. In any case astronomers, astrophysicists and meteorologists have a new concept of the atmosphere's optical properties to develop and evaluate.

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