ETERNAL ETHER WAVES.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 January 1919, Page 6

ETERNAL ETHER WAVES.

AN EXTRAORDINARY THEORY j A recent cable stated that Signor Marconi interviewed by the Daily Chronicle, declared that ether waves were eternal; that some of his messages sent out a decade ago were still travelling starwards, and future communica"tion was probable with other planets by means of ether waves and that he had often received strange signals which seemed to eminate beyond the earth, possibly from the stars. Occasionally operators on wireless stations report that they have heard soifnds of voices, music, tramping of crowds, and explosions of sounds for which they cannot account. It is supposed that in some as yet not understood way the vibrations of the wireless pick up these sounds. The operators say that the air does not suffer from "attenuation," as wires do, and that they believe the wire- ] less station will eventually be able to pick up sound at any distance. If this be true, we may indeed be on the eve of an electric miracle, "Reedy's Mirror" reports, and then goes on to quote the theory, as recently advanced by the Los Angeles Times:— i

"Vibrations of all sounds are thrown into the air and remain there for some time. This is shown by the length of time required for the echo to return to its starting poirt, by the length of tune which elapses between the sending and tlie receiving of a wireless call, and by tlifl fact that sound travels to us, as is indicated by the little pause, vthich can be perceived before we hear what we have already seen. The air envelop round the earth, however, is only fifteen miles deep. Outside of that radius vibrations cannot carry. This has been demonstrated by the kites which the Weather Bureau lias used for a number of years to help in the prediction of temperatures. Now, from all this evidence, we have this deduction: The earth is a ball whirling around in space with an envelope of air fifteen miles thick, an envelope which must have absorbed all the sounds that have teen made since the world began.

"The question is: Where are those sounds? They must be somewhere. They must be within the radius of fifteen miles, unless their vibrations have died out, and recent experiments have shown, it is contended, the probability that vibration is the real perpetual movement. The range of the wireless is something over three thousand miles, so that, even at this comparatively early day in electrical science, it may be that we are beginning to pick up these vibrations. Wireless operators are already complaining of "breaks" in their transmissions, queer, odd sounds which seem almost articulate, and which cannot be accounted for on any other ground than that of 'some phenomena connected with tlie lingering vibrations of other days."