Stray Waves

If the human eye were tuned to longer wave lengths of radiation, it would be able to see radio waves. The ethereal wiggles that gird the globe with speech and music are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum which includes visible light, ultraviolet and infra-red radiation, x-rays, gamma rays from radium. Hence under ideal conditions radio waves travel at the velocity of light -- about 186,270 mi. per sec. -- and for many a year radiomen assumed that wireless signals always traveled at that pace in their journeys around Earth. Last week Dr. Harlan True Stet son of Harvard informed the Institute of Radio Engineers that some waves had been detected jogging along with less than half their theoretical velocity, at speeds as low as 90,000 mi. per sec.

Dr. Stetson, distinguished astronomer and author of Earth, Radio and the Stars, mentioned the matter of decelerated radio waves last year to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At that time there was some discussion of whether the observations were dependable and, if so, what could be the cause. Ordinarily radio waves are held close to Earth by the Kennelly-Heaviside layer of electrified air. "Echoes" have been observed, however, which indicated that the signals sometimes escaped and bounced back, in a fraction of a second, from some higher atmospheric layer.-- It has been assumed that these vertical detours caused an illusion of a slackening of horizontal speed.

Last week, after hundreds of careful time measurements between Paris, Green wich and the U. S., Dr. Stetson had perfected an alternative explanation: The signals do actually vary in speed because they choose different paths across the world. On some days they lope along near the equator, where the terrestrial magnetic field is weak, and keep up to, or very close to, the speed of light. Other days they go by way of the polar regions, where the strong magnetic field slows them down. As to why the same signal should stray one way one day and another the next, Dr. Stetson could only suggest: "An unknown cosmic phenomenon."

--London's Professor E. V. Appleton recorded echoes following intervals of 30 sec., which would indicate that the signals were deflected from some region far beyond the moon.

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