THE STRATOSPHERE

Grey River Argus, 29 April 1938, Page 9

THE STRATOSPHERE

LONDON, March 24. Eminent experts are still, despite the heroic adventures of devoted scientists like Professor Piccard and Captain Albert Stevens, at variance about the stratosphere. Professor Appleton holds the theory that there is a furnace belt somewhere high above this globe, but Mr Charles Philip, author of “The Conquest of the Stratosphere,” rejects this view as least tentatively. The point is of importance in relation to practical aviation possibilities as well as from the purely scientific point of view. At present it seems improbable we shall ever attempt to explore by plane or balloon such altitudes as (hose involved in the furnace theory, but the improbabilities of ti’-day have nowadays a way of becoming the considered possibilities of to-morrow.

It seems, too, that science is at present baffled about the effect and origins of cosmic rays, and how far stratosphereic ionisation may be due to these and not to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. If it exists, the furnace belt is estimated as being at an alti’ tude of 25 miles. Man has so far reached no higher than just under 14 miles. To the lay mind, of course, the proposition looks simple that the nearer the sun. the hotter the air. But' what about when there is n» air? ’