WIRELESS ATMOSPHERICS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4414, 6 November 1934, Page 4

WIRELESS ATMOSPHERICS.

A new discovery* concerning the way in which wireless atmospherics travel through the atmosphere was announced in a paper read, by Professor E. V. Appleton and Mr R. A. Watson Watt at one of the meetings of the International ScientificRadio Union, held recently at Burlington House', London. More than 10 years ago the same workers first succeeded in obtaining* information concerning* the wave-form of those atmospheric impulses -which so frequently impair wireless communication, but their more recent researches have now included a survey, made with photographic registration, of the whole life-history of the atmospheric, from its source at the lightning flash up to a distance of 3,000 miles. Using apparatu in which the disturbance is made to register automatically its own “photograph” at different stages of its existence, they have found that it develops a head and a tail which gradually separate as the propagation proceeds. Although starting as a single unit, it therefore reaches distances of 500 mil-, es and beyond as two separate impulses, the time-interval between which is of the order of a thousandth of a second. It has been known for some time that an atmospheric contains all wavelengths and a specially interesting feature indicated by the new records is that the shorter wavelengths run off ahead of the longer ones so that the head and the tail observed: at great distances are of different wavelengths. At present there is no satisfactory explanation of this remarkable difference in transit time, though it is suspected that the electrical state of the atmosphere is, in some way, responsible.