"The Milky Way Calling!"

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 8, 1 September 1933, Page 9

"The Milky Way Calling!"

Signals Received in America

Was it the music from the spheres That overpowered your mortal ears? Wordsworth was more prophetic in these lines than he knew. The music of the spheres, it seems, takes no more romantic form than wireless atmos: pheries on a wave-length of 144 metres. The receipt of the first wireless signals from the stars is reported in the current issue of "Nature" by the Bel! Telephone Laboratories, New York. In place of the idea that the signals carried any message from distant fel-. Jorvy-beings, however, it is suggested that thunderstorms in the atmospheres of the stars are a more probable origin These "outside" wireless waves were at first thought to proceed from the sun, but a year’s continuous observation has shown that they appear to coine from a fixed point among the stars, perhaps in the constellation Sagittarius. It is possible that their real origin may lie in the Milky Way, a bright arm of which passes through Sagittarius. . As we already receive heat and light from the stars, it is conceivable that we should receive other electro-mag: netic waves, in the shape of wireless atmospherics. But whereas heat and light have their origin in molecules of. matter, wireless requires a larger viprating souree-and from our own atmosphere we can obtain some idea of what the kind of disturbance necessary may be. Just as our atmosphere is liable to electrical storms, producing waves which must penetrate to very great distances, so in the wireless waves now’ recorded we may have some sort of record of thunderstorms.