HIGH OVER ALL

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

HIGH OVER ALL

NEW WORLD COMING INTO OURS. SECRETS OF THE STRATOSPHERE. The 20th century found the first explorers to seek the unknown ocean.of the stratosphere. Professor Piccard was the first to sound this upper region of the atmosphere, penetrating several miles into it, and returning perilously to earth in the steel sphere now in the Science Museum at South Kensington. Other venturers have been less successful. A few months ago the French aeroplane F. 1001, built after three years planning by the Farmans, crashed with its skilled pilot Cagno after reaching a height of six miles, where in some regions at some times of the year the stratosphere begins. This was the most daring attempt yet made, because the explorer was carried upward by aeroplane instead of in a metal sphere lifted by a hydrogen-filled balloon. He was supplied with electric heating apparatus and oxygen cylinders, but something mysteriously went wrong. A month before this \disaster a United States balloon, Explorer 11., designed for the purpose after Professor Piccard’s model, had collapsed for some reasons unknown. Last year Russian and German balloons constructed for, the same voyage both fell disastrously.

Professor Piccard’s recording instruments brought back with him some exact and personally observed knowledge of the stratosphere, but most of what we know about it has been gathered from records brought down by small gas-filled balloons sent up into it during the last 40 years. Some of these sounding balloons, carrying "with them self-recording thermometers and barometers, have reached a height of 19 miles. They first revealed the existence of the stratosphere,, a region above that portion of the atmosphere which is always disturbed by rising and falling currents of air and where the temperature continually ■ and regularly falls with height. One of these sounding balloons brought back the information that above the continent of North America the temperature, which had fallen to 90 degrees below freezing at 47,600 feet, had risen 18 degrees 4000 feet higher up and was still rising.

What the depth of the stratosphere may be, or how far up it extends, is unknown, but its base (or lower limit) varies in different parts of the globe and at different times of the year. Above England it is about 35,000 feet, over the Arctic Ocean it begins at 26,000 feet, and above the Equator it is. highest. There is a great deal of the earth’s atmosphere above it. The observations of shooting stars and of the Aurora (or Northern Lights) tell us something about it. The electrical discharge of the Aurora on its outermost fringe is perceived at 180 miles, shooting stars at 125 miles. At those heights the atmosphere is far. hotter than the hottest summer’s day at the earth’s surface. But it is suspected that the stratosphere region is one of fairly equable temperature, and may have an upper limit before this insupportable temperature begins. That is one of the mysteries which exploration of it seeks to probe. Another question to be answered is that of the nature of the atmospheric gases in the stratosphere. The lighter gases of the atmosphere rise. Are there at these heights layers of hydrogen or helium? We do not know. What we may suppose is that in the unascertained belt of the stratosphere there would be such calm and so little change of temperature that an aeroplane equipped with the right engines would meet little resistance. It would be impossible for any human being to breathe its atmospheric mixture; but man may overcome even this in time, marching as he does from height to height , and from one victory over nature to another. ,