A RADIO MYSTERY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 11 August 1928, Page 5

A RADIO MYSTERY

VAGRANT WAVE.

EXPERTS PUZZLED. A.%IERJCAN JNVESTIGATIOXS. Il’lsw. Association —By Electric Teli-gra]jli Copyright.) —United Service). NEW YORK, Aug. 9. An echo of radio signals, so far inexplicable to scientists, but? promising to re>eal new knowledge of the strata ‘20.) miles above the earth anti aid in solving the conditions affecting long range radio work, are being recorded nightly in the University of Chicago. J)r. Barton and his assistant have been photographing some peculiar multiple signals occurring between 9 p.m. anti 4 a.m. They believe the atmospheric conditions of tlie geographical North Pole, the Magnetic Role, and the Aurora .Borealis regions are responsible for these echoes.

Using an oscillograph to picture the low length waves coming rrom Germany, South America, and California, the two physicists have caught certain alter effects to main signals which cannot be explained by the fact that signals often go round the world, because they occur 100th to 400ths of a second after the main signals, which is too short for a circum-terrestrial path. The scientists -state: “The vagrant wave we are recording apparently takes an excursion several thousand miles more than the direct path from the transmitter to the receiver. Its path is unknown, and we are classifying our data in the hopes of co-ordinating them with the phenomena on or above the earth’s surface which are capable of bending or deflecting waves along paths shorter than the great circle or the earth.”