ARCTIC SECRETS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 263, 5 November 1937, Page 7

ARCTIC SECRETS

SOVIET SCIENTISTS' WORK MOSCOW, Oct. 21. Now that the polar night has fallen, the Soviet scientists living on an icefloe at the North Bole hope to solve the mystery of the Aurora Borealis. The temperature at the icefloe has fallen to 21 degrees below zero. The four scientists have placed eiderdowns over their main living tent, for warmth, and have packed the edges with snow. Although their icefloe is as strong as ever, they are loading three sledges with food, fuel, clothing and tents against an emergency. Auroral rays are sometimes stationary, but other times there is a rapid cross motion. Often they seem to shoot upward, and then to recede. These upward pulses are probably quite real, and may be due to progressive electric discharges. Ail bright, shifting auroras are accompanied by magnetic storms. From where does the electric current come? That is the mystery which the party is attempting to solve. Already, in months of drifting on a floe in the region of the North Pole, they have learned much. They have proved the polar sea to be deeper than the 3000 feet which Nansen’s researches suggested, and have found the climate warmer than was generally supposed—so warm as to melt the ice of their floe huts at the height of last summer. A careful study of Arctic currents is expected to make for much greater accuracy in forecasting the weather on the European Continent.