SCIENTISTS’TEST

Hokitika Guardian, 27 November 1933, Page 7

SCIENTISTS’TEST

MESSAGES RECEIVED FROM AFAR LISTENING TO THE STARS Professor Jansky, of the Bell Labora- ■ lories, says. lie has been listening to j the stars for two years, in the hope ! that he might be able to determine j whether they were endeavouring to conii municate with the earth. He states , that lie is convinced that they are not ' making any effort. This conclusion, He says, was forced upon him, because all I his experiments have demonstrated that ’ there is no break in the continuity of fixed sounds coining from the stars, as ' recorded by radio in his laboratory, says the New York correspondent of the . Herald. Professor Jansky recently detnon- ' strated his observations in a. radio re- = ception programme from tile stars in j the southern sky, for the bene Tit of the | Now York Electrical Society. The reception, says one observer, resembled not'bipg'inore than the steady sizzle of frying bacon. The source of these radio waves was from the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer, in the Milky Way, about midway between the 'southern horizon and the zenith. In lesser volume they came from other parts of the Milky Way. j . Behind Sagittarius lies a mass of j earth, visible only m telescopes. These * stars •10,000 light years away from j stars are thought to be the source of ! most of the sizzling, a short radio wave slightly under 50ft. long, They ore. the centre of the Milky Way, with a gravitational pull so immense that around them like a cartwheel, revolve according to calculation nearly 80,000,000,000 other stars. The earth and the solar system lie in the cartwheel about two-thirds of the way toward the rim. The waves heard travel with the speed of light, and are believed to have started 40,000 ■ years ago from this hub of the universe. What causes them, Professor Jansky J said, is not known. They could not he, j ho said, radiations from ordinary stars like the sun, because none of them seems to come from the. sun, despite its nearness. They might he, he hazarded, rays from young stars that are boiling with energy far in excess of the sun’s.

Professor Jansky said he is makihg new receivers, which will be turned toward the stars in search for shorter wave lengths. He explained that these radio signals might be .the. original waves from stars piercing the earth's atmosphere, or that they could also be waves set up in the earth’s own atmosphere, by the bombardment of primary radio . waves coining from distant space.

-The signals are continuous. At no time has there been noted such a break in their continuity as might be taken to indicate intelligent beings outside the earth were trying to attract attention. .