IMPASSABLE HEAT BELT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 35 (Supplement)

IMPASSABLE HEAT BELT.

Professor E. V. Appleton, who has devoted many years to radio research, especially in connection with short waves, has declared that in the upper atmosphere there is a vast layer of heat of 1000 degrees centigrade, the existence of which was not hitherto known to science.

In this layer no known machinery could function, says the professor, and therefore it constitutes an impassable barrier between the world and the space beyond. Thus man will never be able to fly to the moon, and ultra short waves cannot be of real use to broadcasting. The layer also, in the opinion of the professor, upsets the researches now being conducted upon wireless short waves and the possibility of harnessing microwaves for radio transmission.

An official of the World Radio Research League says the discovery of the heat belt means that all waves below the six-metre mark would be put out of action so far as clear reception is concerned. .Professor Appleton has specialised in radio research, and by sending short waves out over long distances and timing their/return to tiny fractions of a second, he made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of wireless communication — that there was a second “heaviside layer” above the one already known,

estimating the latter to be CO miles above the earth and the other 140 miles. He also discovered how to send wireless waves through these reflecting belts so that they never came back to earth. The layer now discovered apparently is still higher in the upper atmosphere.