N.Z. GEOPHYSICS STATIONS PRAISED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 5

N.Z. GEOPHYSICS STATIONS PRAISED

New Zealand’s network of ionosonde and electromagnetic field recording stations, and the organisation which supports it, are “quite leading” in the Southern Hemisphere, Professor H. A. Bomke, of Fordham University New York, said in Christchurch yesterday. Professor Bomke, who is also employed by the United States Defence Department, is here with another physicist from the department, Dr. W. Ramm, to make contact with members of the Geophysics Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

This is Professor Bomke’s first visit to the New Zealand mainland. During the 1962 American bomb-tests in the Pacific, however, when he supervised a chain of temporary magnetic stations, he called at Rarotonga and Aitutaki.

Asked whether he thought high-level bomb tests a good thing from a scientific point of- view—leading physicists have expressed widely divergent views on this question, because of the disturbance of nature . involved—Professor Bomke said he was neutral in the matter. If high-level tests were thought necessary for other . reasons, he was very happy to go to. a site remote from the test area to measure some of the effects. “Hybrid Waves”

Professor Bomke is particularly interested in recording and interpreting hydromagnetic waves, which are, as he puts it, a kind of hybrid between sound waves and electromagnetic waves. (Light, heat, and radio waves are examples of electromagnetic waves.) The ionosphere is opaque to electromagnetic waves of very low frequencies, but hydromagnetic waves of these frequencies are transmitted.

Because the study of hydromagnetic waves is a relatively new field, different laboratories use different equipment to detect them and the direct comparison of results is difficult, but Professor Bomke hopes'that eventually world data centres may be established, as is already done for the ionosonde radio wave records.

The period of the waves he has been investigating ranges from one-tenth of a second to many hours.

Professor Bomke and Dr. Ramm both emigrated to the United States from Germany soon after World War 11. Professor Bomke is a former associate professor at the University of Munich, and Dr. Ramm once held a similar post at the University of Berlin.

The two men will leave today for Sydney, where they will carry, out similar discussions to those they have had •in Christchurch. From Australia' they will go to Japan.