Irresponsible Ions

When a thoroughgoing magnetic storm gets rolling, there is the devil to pay. Radio and telegraph communications get out of kilter, navigation devices turn unreliable. The reason: great gusts of electrons, blasted loose from the sun by cyclonic sunspots, are overcharging the ionosphere. Effects of this high-level ionization are visible to the human eye in the aurora borealis, seen last fortnight as far south as New York and in Britain's Channel Islands.

Radio waves in the short wave band are peculiarly sensitive to solar conditions. Their normal line of travel is to the ionosphere (which begins 30 miles up), and then back to the earth by reflection. When the ionosphere is supercharged, as it is during sunspot periods, most of the radio short waves are absorbed, and transmission breaks down.

Disturbance of telegraph and teletype communications is due in part to a phenomenon which stems directly from the abnormal electrical charge carried by the ionized atmosphere. The wires which carry the telegraph circuits absorb from the atmosphere sufficient charge to blank out the original current. Last week Western Union reported induced voltages five times those ordinarily present in a line transmitting messages.

Meteorologists expect that the sunspot problem will recur with increasing intensity until 1948 or 1949. Spots run in eleven-year cycles--for reasons science has still to determine. The last big year: 1937.

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