SCIENTISTS' NEW QUEST.

Shannon News, 31 December 1923, Page 2

SCIENTISTS' NEW QUEST.

MYSTIFYING GERMAN EXPERI-

MENTS,

. Scientists who have been studying the possibility o f developments of radio activity in the air arc deeply interested in the report that there is a strong belief that the repeated failure of French airplanes when flying over German territory is due to the action of secret rays discovered by the Germans. Two theories have been put forward. One is that .by a concentration of wireless rays the magneto of the airplane may be affected; and another is that a new ray has been discovered -which will melt certain metals. In this connection it is notable that most of the forced landings of French airplanes when flying from Strasbourg to Prague have taken place in the vicinity of a German airdrome at Furth.

SIR OLIVER LODGE'S VIEW. Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer of wireless telegraphy, who has conducted wide researches into the transmission of power through the air, asked to express his opinion on what has occurred, replied: "it might be possible by strong oscillations to excite surgings in the metal of an airplane, so that sparks occurred at wrong times and thus stopped the engine. No other way is likely." Professor A. M. Low, another scientific investigator, while expressing the view that the claims now advanced for the Germans sounded far-fetched, showed that scientists have been working along the lines of discovering a new force which can be projected through the air with the object of disabling an airplane. " What scientists have been engaged upon," he said, "is the means of sending in the form of oscillations through the air a force which on coming in contact with a metal will generate heat. If this force could be concentrated and made sufficiently powerful the metal of the air* plane could be melted and the machine would be brought down. I feel confident that in 50 or 60 years' time such a thing will be possible. 'ln the laboratory, experiments on these lines have already been successful. It lias been possible to transmit over a distance of two feet rays of a sufficient power to melt a small coil of wire. But there is a wide difference betwean transmitting such a power over a distance of a foot or two and a distance of one or two thousand yards." XAfKN EXPERIMENTS.

a well known fact that for some timet the big German wireless station at Nauen has been experimenting with direction wireless, with the object of sending out wireless rays concentrated along a certain path in the same way as the beams of a searchlight are directed along a certain path. The authorities at Nanen have denied, however, that anything they are doing could in any way have affected the French

airplanes. The director of the Nauen station was furious not long ago when an extraordinary story leaked out about a number of motor-cars having been brought to a dead stop on a lonely road at night by a. iwii-nio. ss beam focused across a stretch- of country by the Nauen station.

French Secret Service agents affirm that this experiment did take place, but a whisper of it somehow or other leaked out, with the result that the Germans have been spending most of their time since in throwing cold water on the whole idea and in saying that, even if motor-cars were brought to a halt by Nauen, the magnetos of these cars had been prepared beforehand for the experiment, which waa merely an ingenious demonstration of ordinary wireless control. This does not, however, fit in with the incautious statement of one German technician with the night party in question, who waa heard triumphantly to deciare that what Nauen was sending out that night was a directed beam having such characteristics and such power that it might be regarded as a brand new form of wireless ray. Last year Professor L. G. V. Rota, an Italian scientist, described experiments he was conducting with telluric currents, which emanate from the earth and with which Lord Kelvin had occupied himself befora his death. He affirmed that it would be possible with these currents to melt heavy masses of metal at a distance of 60 miles and to put out of action a wireless station at q range of 200 rniles.