THE RAINFALL,

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18392, 28 July 1931, Page 10

THE RAINFALL,

CONTROLLED BY PLANETS. ADDRESS TO SCIENTISTS. NEW YORK, June 20. Look to the planets for the key to rainfall, Halbert P. Gillette, civil engineer, of San Marine, Cal., and former Columbia University professor, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science. When they train their gatling guns on sun and earth, down comes the deluge, he said, explaining that ny gatling guns he meant the axes of the planets’ magnetic fields. His theory is that it is not the sun spots that make the wet weather cycles on earth, but that both the sun spots and the heavy rainfall on earth are caused by the planetary conditions.

Mr Gillette said that the magnetic cycles of the planets lined up in perfect agreement with the clay deposits, or varves, in geological formations. The thickness of the varves indicates the amounts of clay deposited year by year in a given formation and that in turn testifies to the relative amount of rainfall running over the drainage surfaces.

The thickness of these varves, he added, corresponds to the relative thickness of the rings shown in cross sections of sequoia trees. By their thickness these rings also indicate the amount of rainfall year by year in the past. . A thick ring indicates a season of heavy rain and a thin ring a dry year.

Rainfall records hundreds of years back can be traced by studying the tree rings. The rings and the varves, Mr Gillette said, form a chart of wet seasons extending back 18,000 years. To Baron Gerard de Geer, noted Swedish geologist, he gives credit for the clay var\e record, and to Professor A. E. Douglas, University of Arizona, astronomer, credit for the sequoia ring researches. The greatest supercycle of all. which he regards as the Ice age cycle, is 21,500 years. Mr Gillette suggested that there might he another ice age in 10,000 years or so.

A subcycle of this Is a, period of

1774 years, which fits well into the historic record of great floods in 450 B.C. and 1350 A.D. As for the present, he said, it will be 300 years more before the dry maximum is reached. Mr Gillette said that he approached the subjeot first from the point of view of engineering, to determine rainfall possibilities, in relation to building dams. He said that the oldest clay varves were found in the oil shales of Colorado, giving a rain gauge record for 300,000 years. Ssclentlflc Research and Capital. Scientific research -was described by Maurice Holland, director of engineering and industrial research of the National Research Council, as “one of

the best forms of security for capital invested in industry.’’ “To-day’s discovery in the field of scientific endeavour," he said, “inevitably leads to practical application in the field of business to-morrow. The slow process of evolution of Industry by Improvements in mechanical equipment has given way to revolution of manufacturing processes by research. “Radio and commercial air transport are good illustrations of the lusty brood of the twentieth century generation of Industries which have opened the door of opportunity with a science key,” he said. Roy J. Kennedy and Edward M. Thorndike, Research Fellows in Physics of the California Institute of Technology, reported another barrier

removed from the study of the behaviour of light as a key to the secret of the structure of the universe. They told the association of completing an experiment that disproved that electrostatio potential in interstellar space had anything to do with the Einstein red-shift in light rays from distant stars. Mr Kennedy said this experiment removed the possibility of any electric charges of the sky having an influence on light rays, similar to gravitational influence, as they travel through space. This is said to have an important bearing upon the - efforts of Einsteia to develop a unified field theory.