IGY

The earth is a minor, insignificant planet in the vast universe, but it is important to its inhabitants, and it is an inconvenient object for them to study. It is too big to be observed from one or a few places. Its surface is covered with rapidly moving fluids. Its atmosphere swirls with big and little storms. Its oceans are stirred by currents. Its solid crust shakes like jelly, and its plastic interior probably flows slowly in largely unknown ways. Influence? from the sun and beyond the sun affect the passive earth. Cosmic rays from the depths of space beat upon it, and meteors plunge like fireflies into its atmosphere. Its magnetic field fluctuates slightly; so does its gravitation. Scientists are sure that all these changes and influences are interconnected in intricate ways, but no one knows just how, because no one has "ever observed them all in detail during the same period.

62 Nations, $500 Million. During the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which starts this week, more than 10,000 scientists backed by something like $500 million will give the earth a long, complex, intent going-over. The IGY, which runs from 7:00 p.m. E.S.T. June 30, 1957 through Dec. 31, 1958, was originally -the idea of an informal group of scientists led by Physicist Lloyd V. Berkner, who is head of the group of Eastern universities that runs. Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1953 the International Council of Scientific Unions accepted responsibility for IGY. Nation after nation offered men, observing stations, apparatus and money. Now 62 nations have joined the worldwide effort. The Dominican Republic participates in one field of activity (meteorology) and will operate one station. The U.S. (240 stations) and the U.S.S.R. (150 stations) participate in all 13 activities.

Most spectacular IGY operations will be attempts by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to launch research satellites loaded with instruments to observe the earth, the high atmosphere and influences from space. But other programs are hardly less glamorous. Eleven nations have planned or set up stations on the hostile Antarctic Continent. The Arctic is getting similar close attention. So are unfrequented parts of the oceans, the rainiest tropical forests and the driest deserts.

Some of these stations will do exciting things, such as shooting rockets to the top of the atmosphere or launching great balloons with instrument-packed gondolas. The duties of others will be exciting only to dedicated specialists: monotonous observations of winds, ocean currents, cosmic rays, the aurora, changes in the sun's surface, fading of radio waves and twinkling of stars. But all such observations will be important, and the data flowing from them will be carefully stored and catalogued in designated centers.

Payoff. When the IGY is over on New Year's Day 1959, scientists may have discovered many new things about the earth and its neighbors in space. The chances are, however, that they will not know very much more than they did before. The great increase in knowledge will come when enormous masses of data have been digested, when books of charts have been printed, and when hundreds of thousands of scientists have painfully created an "earth model" out of all this information. Then and then only will man have a chance to better understand the small planet on which he lives.

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