WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THE ELECTRICITY THAT LEAKS INTO SPACE

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 99, 29 April 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THE ELECTRICITY THAT LEAKS INTO SPACE

A writer in the "Children's Newspaper" has been discussing the many mysterious electric happenings in the air and the possibility of perils lurk- ■ ing in the over-production of elec- ; tricity, particularly that which is poured out in an ever-increasing quantity in the form of radio and short-wave beams of high frequency. From time to time reports come to hand of tragedies due to man's failure to control the elusive electric current which he ha« called into being and bottled up (safely, as he thinks) in insulated accumulators, cables and dynamos. This electric current is known to be composed of countless myriads of electrons, likened 'by Sir James Jeans and other scientists to bullets which literally bombard us in the form of wireless waves and other types of radiant energy. The cause of the mysterious disaster to the Hindenburg has been ascribed to an electric charge, and the fact that the fire 'broke out so suddenly as the airship came near the mooring mast, would tend to suggest that it Was an electric charge in the mast which ignited the hydrogen as it was being released to facilitate landhig. Some astonishing experiences are recorded following the electrification of a crane on a steel structure of a building being erected in Portman Square, London. The crane was only 120 yards from the aerial of a broadcasting station, and so powerfully did the crane 'become charged with the radiations from the aerial that to touch it produced a violent shock with burns. Petrol, safety matches and hemp were set alight by various methods of contact with the erane, from which we may gather an idea of the enormous risk of fire existing, apart from the terrors of explosions of gas and electric mains. It is well known that airships and aeroplanes collect a considerable charge of electrons in a prolonged passage through the air, as there exists (particularly in dry atmospheric conditions) no possibility of earthing the electricity while suspended in the air. The Hindenburg was provided with landing cables adapted to release safely, on touching the earth, any atmospheric electricity collected on the journey. These had reached the earth, and operated like a lightning conductor, but if the mooring mast was independently charged, the space between it and the airship might well have become a spark gap, and, as often occurs between clouds when there is a jump from high potential to low with a lightning flash as a consequence, a mere spark would have caused the explosion in so inflammable a gas as hydrogen, which was being released

Why should the mooring mast have become so electrified? In the case of the crane it was proved conclusively that it was due to the dry conditions and the proximity of the broadcasting aerial. For this reason broadcasting aerials, electric cable pylons, and even the suspended wires and connections, which are to a great extent insulated, gather considerable charges, sufficient to electrify the atmosphere in their vicinity and produce streams of waves, the effect of which radio listeners in the vicinity know so well. Much of this free electricity, together with that which gathers from thunder clouds and damp atmosphere (occasionally increased by vast outpourings from the sun when solar storms occur), settles on the objects such as metal structures, which may become cliarged more or less. This may very well have happened to the mooring mast at Lakeliurst.

A recent annual report or Municipal Electricity Undertakings in London revealed a loss of 85,000,000 units of electricity in one year in London alone. It had just leaked away- —only about 10 units per inhabitant, it is

true, but illustrating the fact that there ia no euch thing as perfect insulation and that electrons are always escaping. Where do they go ? Into the atmosphere in some cases; through defective unions jn others, where the electrons generate heat and a train of tragedies occasionally results. Some may escape from mains into the earth (very damp conditions inducing this) and there results the possibility of producing such an exploson as in 1928 which wrecked a long stretch of Holburn l>y igniting the gas main. Sometimes it is a leaky water-main that causes the electrons to break through the normally effective insulation, for water has a great thirst for electrons, as many a bathroom tragedy testifies. A normally safe switch and insulation becomes useless when the victim stands in the water and so becomes a first-class conductor for hundreds of vojts to pass freely to earth. But, quite apart from these accidental leakages, there is always a continuous escape of electrons through insulating materials, no matter what they are. Neither

rubber, vulcanite, ebonite, glaas. mwa, silk, nor anything else offers a pei feet obstruction to the passage of electrons; they merely delay their passage more or less, under normal con* ditions, and then only until decay and the inroad of damp facilitates a grand rush, and possibly a house or a church is burnt out. Even in passing through wires and cable# the electrons creep through and becom® free, while there is always a loss in passage from high potential to low. Nevertheless, insulation under normal conditions and known degrees of voltage reduces tlie loss sufficiently to make it of no consequence in the ordinary handling of electricity, and by an ingenious of fuse* accidents can be localised without very much difficulty. It is free and uncontrolled electrons which by insidious operation may possess the chief power for mischief. The more experts investigate, tli* more evidence comes to light that, together with the greatly increased use of the Hertzian waves of radio and the enormous increase in ele.ctrio appliances of every kind, the atmosphere is becoming impregnated to a serious extent by waves of electron! speeding in every direction. Within only a generation the world's atmospheric envelope has become flooded with this continuous outpouring of electric energy. What is the ultimate possibility of gome harmful consequence of all this? No man knows, but imagination may picture an atmosphere becoming so overcharged that a sudden violent shock, a world-wide flash .of blua electric flame, such as has been reported occasionally on a very small scale, might encircle the earth and spread devastation. That ia for the imagination of soma wild novelist to work out, and fears of such consequences need not trouble us at all, for Mother Earth has herself a greater thirst for electrons than the atmosphere. There is no possibility of the atmosphere ever retaining a sufficient su]>er-charge of electrons to produce &uch a world-wide flash. The solid body of the earth will not permit the atmosphere to hold more than a very limited quantity locally; over doses rush to earth as lightning flashes, and the rest is absorbed as opportunity offers, so that the atmosphere, as regards electricity, may be likened to a sieve which permits the electrons to rush back to earth. Actually it is in the passing back to earth where the peril does exist, particularly for those who g«t in the way. So we come back from the regions of fanciful fears to the serious side of this menace—the everincreasing streams of electrons that are being torn from their atoms and shot into the atmosphere in every