Radio and the Aurora

Franklin Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 31, 20 March 1939, Page 8 (Supplement)

Radio and the Aurora

A new use l'or radio, to light the sky 50 miles overhead as brightly as the full moon does, is proposed in “Nature” the British science journal, says the “Christian Science Monitor.” The new light would be an artificial aurora. A single radio station could cover a patch of sky 60 miles in diameter with this light. It would illuminate country roads as well as ordinary lighting systems would and could be used anywhere. Two radio stations, WLW, of the Crossley Radio Corporation at Cincinnati, and RV-t at Moscow, already have the power to make the preliminary tests, says the author of the proposal, Dr. V. A. Bailey, of the University of Sydney.

Both stations are 500 kilowatts. The next highest power in the United States is 50 kilowatts. The two stations, Dr. Bailey explains, would be able to produce small auroras. But he adds, a million kilowatts, a power not out of reach, would light ten thousand square kilometres of sky ectual to the full moon.

This lighting would be directly overhead and to a radius of 30 miles around the station. The principles of the new light are already in operation in laboratories, Dr. Bailey says.

One is the glow discharge lamp. Without wires or current, if placed in an electrical field, it gives a brilliant light from gas in the bulb which becomes “excited” by electricity. The other principle is that of building up vibration by oscillation, like a child's swing that goes higher with each push.