SILENT DEATH Super-Sound: Top Secret Killer

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 February 1947, Page 8

SILENT DEATH Super-Sound: Top Secret Killer

Across- & green field-, something flashed’. No one eonlcT see it- no one coiiTcl?.Hear, it- It had: no form,- and no substance . . . . frat it could' kill. It killed’ swiftly, hammering at- its- victim witfi: wave upon-wave of silent force (writes Michael Ardizzone in- the Evening Post), until everyone of the precious blood corpuscles on which, life depends had been smashed to atoms. Top-secret killer after the atom bomb, Super-sound had been at work. True, its day’s “bag.” was only a rabbit, slaughtered’ at 100 yards by the pressing of a switch. But to-morrow ? "Will Super-sound’be the -weapon of World War III?

; Scientists- outside the tight ring p£ secrecy- which, surrounds: official research- in: Britain-. and : America—and: in other countries- where the: thought- of war is- taken: seriously— Will tell, you- “No”; no,, that: is- unless ■World-War 111 is a very long, way off. But there were: people who said ; much the. same about atomic energy. ? Ever since the walls of Jericho fell, man-, has- had : an inkling- of- the power of sound, has known it as a possible killer. Men have perished; from, the sound' of bells; and- sirens, have suffered- mysterious : sicknesses after hearing even distant noises. - Super-sound, though; man has, known only recently, its powers, infinitely greater than those of the mere sound which he can hear,. are still half-mystery to him. Its potentialities, though not without promise of some good, are infinitely sinister. That is why workers in Britain’s jet factories, where aero engines testing at speed throw off “noises” which are higher than the human ear can catch, are frightened. They are frightened because there are super-sounds, causing, vibrations in the atmosphere many times faster than those of the highest audible sound. Will what happened to the rabbit happen to them? Almost certainly not. People are being bombarded by super-sounds all the time, without ill-effect. It is only when the supersounds —or supersonics as they are called—are concentrated into a beam that they become dangerous. Sound Gun

Left to themselves, super-sounds, like ordinary sounds, radiate outwards in all directions: but when they are produced artificially in the Sound Gun—the contraption which killed the rabbit—they rush out together with all the punch which hundreds of thousands of vibrations occurring every second can give. Super-sounds kill by “shaking up.” All these vibrations suddenly concentrating on living tissue dislocate and smash the delicate mechanism of life. The Sound Gun, which acts on the principle of a simple quartz crystal (the kind of thing you may find yourself if you break open an ordinary flight pebble) being violently oscillated in a small space with an outlet in one direction only, has not yet been tried on man. Wartime experiments, shrouded in as much secrecy as radar and the Manhattan Project, failed to produce an effective weapon of war... for the time being. Chief obstacles still to be overcome are immobility (for the Sound Gun needs a lot of power for setting up the necessary oscillations) and the difficulty of switching the beam from one object to another. They may prove insuperable. Official secrecy is strict, for supersounds have more uses in war than as potential death-rays. At Britain’s Ministry of Supply, which controls all warlike research, officials, shutting up like clams at the mere mention- of supersonics, say that this is a “forbidden” subject, and then are silent. Of course, there is nothing secret about their existence. Almost everyone who has been to school knows that above those high notes which are the highest our ears—very limited instruments —can hear are countless others which are silent to us because our hearing mechanism cannot cope with more than 20,000 vibrations a second. Naturalists are aware, for instance, that the humming bird goes on singing long after it has passed what is

to us its highest note; that is to say, that its. throat goes on pulsing with silent song. They know, too, that man hears only about half £>t the .cricket’s chirp, the- other half being high up in the realm of super-sound. ; It is the application of these principles to modern warfare which has been kept under lock and; key. For example, it was with the help of supersonics that the British Navy fought the U-boat menace in World War 11, up to the advent of radar. The device used, was a simple imitation of the bat’s method of finding its way in the dark. Cue From The Bat

It is one of the wonders of Nature that the bat can fly blindfold, avoiding even the flimsiest obstacle placed in its way. It does this by sending out from the tip of its long, pointed nose a beam of- supersonics vastly higher than the squeak by which human beings know of a bat’s presence; and these, striking against the obstacles, send back echoes which the bat’s big, trumpet-like ears pick up. The echoes vary so exactly with the distance of the obstacle that the bat can judge its way within the tiniest fraction of an inch. The Navy, taking its cue from the bat, installed in its warships submarine detecting devices which sent supersonics down into the water and recorded the echoes which they made on striking submerged objects. It is not hard to think of other fields opened up by the advances in scientific fighting which the closing year of World War II revealed in which supersonics can be employed . . and in which scientists in many countries are experimenting. Supersonics may'yet prove to be the means of intercepting approaching rockets; and at the other end they may help in the control of guided missiles. However, supersonics have their peacetime uses, too, and their possibilities for helping civilisation, as well as for destroying it, are limitless. Take the case of Mr Schick, a young engineer in Melbourne, Australia, who has discovered that a few seconds’ exposure to a kind of sound gun will kill the hardiest germs. In fact, it shatters them completely. Mr Schick has perfected a machine which, he believes, is the final answer to the problem of infected milk.

Supersonics may in time answer many others of humanity’s problems. It is" not being over-fanciful to suggest that some day they may replace the knife in more than one branch of surgery, owing to their tremendous powers of penetration. The sound gun has proved, too, to be far more effective, and far cheaper, than the machinery previously used for emulsifying, the process of mixing oil with other ingredients. A vessel containing, say, oil and water, and placed in the path of a supersonic beam, is filled with such violent agitation that the oil is split into billions of tiny particles and mixes easily.

Supersonics will , age new wine, giving it the flavour and the “bouquet” of rare old vintages. In Britain even the laundries are experimenting with them, seeking _ a way of soaking rather than washing the dirt out of people’s clothes. Use On Trawlers

Meanwhile, little machines very like the Navy’s submarine detectors are being fitted into hundreds of fishing trawlers. Simplified so that even the roughest old sea dog can use them, they show at a glance when there are shoals of fish under the keel, and so vastly ease the fishermen’s task. Something very similar is being used by the Admiralty for mapping the sea bottom and locating the many new wrecks which the war sent th ere - . ; „ , Recently it has been found that supersonic beams, penetrating steel, will discover flaws, even through thickness of 20 feet and more. British railways are using them regularly for testing axles. In fact, the harnessing of supersounds to peaceful purposes is gradually becoming an everyday affair, though how far it is keeping pace with their employment for more, sinister ends is a question of which the answer is a State secret in many lands. Little is publicly known of the dangers they may hold for mankind, even when peaceably employed—the very dangers of which the jet men are now apprehensive. Minor effects are known to be apathy and drowsiness; future possibilities are madness . . . and the rabbit’s death.