Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1918. ETERNAL ETHER WAVES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1931, 25 January 1919, Page 2

Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1918. ETERNAL ETHER WAVES.

A RECENT <•; 1 1»!(.* whiled that Signor .Marconi, interviewed by (In; Daily Chronicle, declared tha! ether waves were clcrnal; I hat some o|' Ins messages sent out a decade ago mere .-'till travelling slarwards. and future communication was probable with other planets by mean- id' ether wave.', and that he had oft on received strange signals which seemed to .emanate beyond •the earth, possibly from the slat's. Occasionally operators on wirele-s stations report that they have beard sounds of voices, music, I ramping of crowds, and explosions of sounds tor which they cannot account. It is supposed that in some as yet no! understood way the vibrations of the wireless pick up these sounds. The operators say that the air doc.-, not suffer from “attenuation.” as wires’do, and that they believe the wireless station will eventually be able to pick up sound at any distance, If this be true, we may indeed be on the eve of an electric miracle. “Reedy’s Mirror’ reports and then goes on to quote the theory. as recently advanced by the Los Angeles Times; —*‘\ ibrations ol all sounds are thrown into the air and remain there for some time. This is shown by the length of lime required for the echo to return to its starling point, by the length of time which elapses between the .-ending and the receiving of a wireless call, and by the fact that sound travels to us, as is indicated by the little pause, which can be perceived before we hear what we have already seen. The air .envelope round the earth, however, is only fifteen miles deep. Outside of that, radius vibrations cannot carry. This has been demonstrated by the kites which the Weather Bureau has used for a number of years to help in the prediction of temperatures.

Now, I‘rnm nil this evidence, we have tin’s deduction: The earth is a hall' whirling around in space with an envelope of air fifteen miles thick, an envelope which must have absorbed all the sounds (haChave been made since the world began. The question is: Where art* those sounds ? They must be somewhere. They must be within the radius of lift(•en miles, unless their vibrations have- died out, and recent experi-. meals have shown, it is contended, .the probability (hat vibration is the real perpetual movement. The range of the wireless is something over three* thousand miles, so (hat, even at this comparatively early day in electrical science,, it may be that we are beginning to pick up these vibrations. Wireless operators are already complaining of “breaks” in their transmissions, queer*, odd sounds which seem almost articulate, and which cannot be accounted for on any other ground than that of some phenomena connected with the lingering vibrations of other davs.”