VAST HEAT BELT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 204, 29 August 1935, Page 8

VAST HEAT BELT.

ABOVE THE EARTH. EFFECTS ON BROADCASTING? PROFESSOR'S COMMENTS. According to a cabled message from London, man -will never be able to fly to the moon, and. ultra short waves cannot be of real use to broadcasting. Professor P. W. Burbidgc, professor of physics at the Auckland University College, is not prepared to say that the day will come when a trip to the moon will be included among holiday attractions, but he describes the reference to ultra short waves as not strictly correct. In an interview this morning Professor Biu - bidge said that he was sure that Professor E. V. Appleton, whose discovery that there is a vast layer of heat in the upper atmosphere is stated to prove that ultra short waves cannot be of genuine use to broadcasting, would not agree with the bald statement as cabled from London. "To say that ultra short waves cannot be of any use.to broadcasting is putting the position altogether too baldly," he said. "For instance, it is intended to broadcast television by ultra short waves, so that in that respect alone the cabled statement is not correct." The announcement that Professor Appleton had discovered a vast heat belt of 1000 degrees Centigrade to exist in the upper atmosphere was not really new, said Professor Burbidge, as Professor Appleton had written an article on the subject in a recent issue of "Xature." In that article he had stated that until some years ago it had been generally thought that the temperature of the' stratosphere was practically uniform, but that in recent years a radical change in such notions had been effected. There was definite evidence that solar radiation did not pass through the middle part of the atmosphere without warming it. and in still higher atmospheric levels such heating might be expected to be specially pronounced,, since the solar radiation there was more intense and the thermal capacity of the transmission medium least. Concluding his article, Professor Appleton had stated that it might appear that extraordinarily large changes of temperature at high atmospheric levels could not possibly have any influence on wireless communications, but such was not the case.

May Not Be Impenetrable. > Concerning the cabled statement that the vast layer of heat of ISOO degrees F. constituted an impassable barrier between the world and the space beyond. Professor Burbidge said that the heat belt-was about 200 miles away from the earth and that the pressure at that height was exceedingly small, under a millionth of an atmosphere. As there was so little matter in those regions it might still be possible to penetrate the heat layer by means cjf rocket devices. Professor Burbidge said that it was not easy for the layman to conceive exactly what Professor Appleton meant when he spoke of temperatures in high altitudes. Professor Appleton had found out by means of reflections of wireless signals from special layers which* existed in those regions that particles of gas there had high velocities, and that was what he meant when he spoke of temperatures. It did not follow that if anyone were to take a material body to those regions it would have the high temperature referred to by Professor Appleton, for the loss of heat by radiation from a material body would'be very great. The statement, therefore, that the heat belt that had been discovrd in th upper regions constituted an impassable barrier was open to argument. Personally, said Professor Burbidge, he did not see why rocks should not be able to pass through the belt. The source of the heat belt, Piwfessor Burbidge explained, was the absorption of the sun's rays and the energy from them in a small amount of matter, thus trivin" rise to high temperatures. A high "temperature affected a number of electrons in unit volume at those levels, and that affected the shortest wavelength usable in round-the-world communication. The result was that some of those electrons which otherwise would be available could not be used. When that fact was known it could be understood that the high temperature layer had a bad effect on distant communcation by wireless.