BALLOON PROJECT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 131, 26 January 1932, Page 7

BALLOON PROJECT

FIFTEEN MIlJES UP INTERYIEW WITH DR. WHIPPLE ON UPPER AIR PROBLEMS. SKY WOULD' APPEAR DARKER. Professor Piccard, six months ago, making an ascent from Bavaria ixi a sp.ecially-designed balloon, reached a height of nearly ten miles. Now an attempt is to he made by Messrs. Eustace and Oswald Short to beat this record, and to explore the upper air at a height of fifteen or seventeen miles. Upper air problems are rich in interest, and some of the lines on which progress might he made were indicated in an interview with a representative of the London Ohserver by Dr, E. J. W. Whipple, Superintendent of Kew Observatory. So far as meteorology is concerned, the requirements, speaking generally, are simple. They concern chiefly temperature, pressure, and humidity, and the problems they present have already been largely sOlved by the u.'2 of the small balioons carrying- delicate instruments, such as are sent up regularly from Kew and from Sealand, near Chester. We know, Dr. Whipple said, that the amount of water vapour in the air at low temperature is very small indeed, and we knoyr approximately what there is in the levels in which cloud can be formed. But although very strikitig photqgraphs have been published recently of mothor-of-pearl clouds sixteen miles up, which have been observed from the ground ih Norway, clouds as a general rule do not form at a greater height than six miles, and therefore there is no direct way of ascertaining. how much water vapour there is above that height. If, however, a sample of the air could be taken at anything like fifteen miles up, and brought down, it would show if there is more water vapour there in proportion to the air than there is at half that height. Upper Air Problems Another problem which might be solved more completely than it has been, concerns the constitution of the air at a great height. Some years ago, it was recalled, it was thought that hydrogen would predominate in the upper air, because it iloats above tbe other gases, but from more recent observations of the aurora, it appears that there is not this amount of hydrogen floating above oxygen and nitrogen that one might expect, but that the latter gases predominate up to enormous heights. Then there is the question of penetrating radiation which Professor Piccard intended to tackle. It is a subject of very great eontroversy. It was observed, and it would be decidedly useful to have observations made at a great' height. One of tbe advantages of concentrating on this line of research would be tbat observations could be recorded whilst the balloonists and their scientific observer were inside the hermetically sealed globe in which the ascent is to be made. Whilst many observations depend on the use of instruments outside the cage, work on this line of research could he carried on quite satisfactorily inside. What, Dr. Whipple, was asked, would the balloonists, looking through the windows of their sealed globe, be likely to see at a height of fifteen' miles ? The sky, he said, would probably appear extraordinarily black, or at any rate a very deep blue, %etting blacker and blacker the higher they go up. And I should think, he added they would have a good chance of seeing the stars in daylight.