131 458
ALSO BY
JL TUZO WILSON
ONE CHINESE MOON
With J. A. Jacobs and R. D. Russell:
PHYSICS AND GEOLOGY
(i959)
G*Y
THE YEAR OF
THE NEW MOONS
THE YEAR OF
THE NEW MOONS
3. TUZO WILSON
FOREWORD BY LLOYD V. BERKNER
6 i
ALFRED-A-KNOPF
NEW YORK
L. C. catalog card number: 61-14195
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright 1961 by J, Tuzo Wilson.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro-
duced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief
passages and reproduce not more than three illustrations
in a review to "be printed in a magazine
or newspaper. Manufactured in the
United States of America.
FIRST EDITION
T O
Pat and Sue
FOREWORD
The International Geophysical Year (IGY) was perhaps the
most ambitious and at the same time the most successful co-
operative enterprise ever undertaken by man. The IGY was a
scientific year. It was a year when men of sixty-seven nations
agreed to observe the earth over its whole surface, simulta-
neously, and with precise instruments designed to the same
standards so that the changing phenomena enveloping the
earth could be caught and described in their full global sense.
In IGY; The Year of the New Moons, Professor J. Tuzo
Wilson describes the characteristics of the earth that were
observed during the IGY the elements of our surroundings
that give us our ever-changing environment. But more than
that, he tells at first hand of the people in distant and varied
lands who worked together to make the IGY the great scien-
tific success that it was. Sitting together with me nearly two
years ago on an antarctic plane jammed with men and gear,
Professor Wilson outlined his plans to fuse the scientific and
the human aspects of the IGY in the present volume.
Professor Wilson was president of the International Union
of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) during the IGY. This
FOREWORD
important union of scientists carried a major responsibility
for the adequate functioning of the complex system of obser-
vations of the "y ear -" The IUGG had joined with TUnion
Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI), the International
Astronomical Union (IAU), and the International Geo-
graphical Union (IGU) to organize the IGY through the
Comite Special de TAnn<6e Geophysique Internationale
(CSAGI) under the parent body of all international unions,
the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU).
Acting outside the usual political and diplomatic framework
of nations, the IGY was planned and executed by scientists
working in close collaboration, with immense assistance from
their countries. The job took eight years to accomplish, and
our comprehension of our environment is still undergoing
major changes as a consequence.
During the planning and execution of the IGY, Jock Wil-
son travelled to every corner of the earth. With great wisdom,
the Government of Canada and the University of Toronto
provided the time and support that enabled him to oversee
the IGY on behalf of the IUGG. As a leading world scientist,
Jock Wilson brings the perspective of the impartial, keen
observer of events around him, acting without reference to
his personal comfort or safety when there is a job to be done
or a significant observation to be made. As a Canadian, he is
naturally an authority on the polar regions. And as a geo-
physicist, he counts the whole world as his realm. Those who
have read One Chinese Moon, in which he tells of his travels
in the People's Republic of China, will have seen the pene-
trating insight, broad perspective, and dry humour with
which he deals with one of the world's most troubled areas.
In 1958 during scientific meetings at the National Academy
of Sciences I conferred briefly with Wilson and invited him
to join an IGY party of scientists going to the Antarctic for
several weeks late that year. Obviously, Wilson could make a
FOREWORD ix
definite contribution to the assessment of the difficult scien-
tific work being carried on in that remote "seventh conti-
nent/' His response was unhesitating; at the expense of other
plans, he joined us in our studies, crisscrossing the continent
for many thousands of miles between isolated bases and field
parties. When an observer was needed for a hazardous recon-
naissance with a single-engined plane into little-explored
areas, Jock was in the party. When a heated scientific discus-
sion went on in some antarctic hut during a blizzard, he was
in the thick of it, tapping a deep store of scientific knowledge.
Jock Wilson was always present on a steep climb or a long
hike that might continue right through the night; and always
he was a delightful companion, with an apt anecdote for any
situation. Wilson's cold scientific judgment is agreeably
tempered by a spontaneous and exciting love of adventure.
It has been said that rule of law among nations will not be
achieved until men are bound together by common threads
of cultural understanding. Certainly science is one of those
threads perhaps a major line that permits men to speak to
one another with comprehension, confidence, and common
purpose. Coming in times of international tension, the IGY
was a clear demonstration of the power of such cultural
bonds. In this book Professor Wilson has captured the sense
of desire of all peoples, within the universal scientific culture,
to labor for the benefit of all.
LLOYT> V. BERKNER
Retiring President,
International Council
of Scientific Unions
PREFACE
To most people the IGY was little more than a set of initials
vaguely associated with a branch of scientific activity that
finally was made manifest in the Sputnik. Although it ab-
sorbed the imagination and energies of thousands of the
world's scientists for eighteen months, to the general public
the purpose of the International Geophysical Year was not
nearly as clear as the delighted realization that scientists either
could not count or did not know how many months there are
in a year.
In these days when advances in scientific knowledge affect
every facet of our lives, it is important that we all know as
much about science as we can. It was my good fortune, during
the IGY, to have unrivalled opportunities to travel the world
and to meet the men working on IGY projects. This book
combines a record of these journeys with an account of the
scientific programs. This strange mixture is deliberate. I hope
that the parts devoted to travel will bring home to the reader
how truly international is science, and show that scientists
are as much interested in other aspects of human affairs as
anyone else. I also hope that my observations as a scientist
Xll
PREFACE
abroad will provide a series of park benches on which the
reader may rest and draw breath before resuming his way
along the unfamiliar paths of science. Such alternations of
work and interruptions are the normal pattern of life of sci-
entists.
For providing opportunities to undertake these travels and
for making them possible, I am particularly indebted to the
University of Colorado; The Romanian Institute of Cultural
Relations with Foreign Countries; the Association of Cana-
dian Clubs; the International Union of Geodesy and Geo-
physics; the Society of Sigma Xi; the Defense Research Board
of Canada; the National Research Council of Canada; the
Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Geology of the
USSR; the Academia Sinica, Peking; the Academia Sinica,
Taipeh; the University of Tokyo; the Japanese Broadcasting
Corporation; the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States; the New Zealand Department of Scientific and In-
dustrial Research; and the University of Toronto. I should
like to thank the many people who received me so hospitably
during these trips and who answered so many of my questions.
To Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner I am doubly indebted both for
being my host and mentor on a trip to Antarctica, which he
has studied for thirty years, and for his generous Foreword.
For supplementary information I wrote to the secretaries of
national committees for the IGY and many other individuals
in the sixty-seven participating countries, and received valu-
able replies and photographs. I only regret that I have not been
able to use all the material so liberally provided. The files of
popular and scientific journals also made available important
information. I should like to express my thanks to all these
generous collaborators. I am particularly grateful to Mr. Hugh
Odishaw and Mr. Pembroke J. Hart of World Data Centre
A, to Professor V. V. Beloussov and Mme V. A. Troitskaya
of World Data Centre B, and to members of the Canadian
PREFACE xiii
committee on the IGY for help in assembling information
and photographs. I should also like to pay tribute to Ing. Gen.
Georges Laclav&re of Paris, secretary of the IUGG, for the
enormous load of work he has carried (in addition to his nor-
mal job) and for the sound advice, inspiration, and assistance
he has so often given me.
When a draft of the book had been completed, I sent one
or more chapters to specialists for criticism and comments.
For their help I am grateful to Doctors G. Hattersley-Smith
J. F. Heard, C. O. Hines, P. M. Millman, D. A. MacRae, J. A.
O'Keefe, F. Press, D. C. Rose, A. H. Shapley, P. H. Serson,
J. P. Tully, and H. Wexler. Needless to say, they are not to
be held responsible for what is here said.
I am particularly indebted to Miss Helen O'Reilly and Mr.
Henry Robbins for editorial comment, and to Professor
W. H. Watson, Doctors M. G. Rochester and T. O. Jones,
and Mr. R. Roden for technical comments on drafts of the
whole book.
Mrs. Sylvia Derenyi, Miss Sylvia Lummis, and Mrs. Nancy
Thoman typed the manuscript, and Mrs. Thoman also pre-
pared the index. Mr. Alex Aiken is the artist responsible for
all the drawings.
To all these people I extend my most grateful thanks.
Without their help the book would not have covered as large
a range or been as accurate.
Above all, I am indebted to my wife, Isabel, for editing the
text and for ameliorating much that was difficult or dull.
J. T. W.
CONTENTS
1 The International Geophysical Year 3
2 Colorado, July 1957 14
3 - The Sun 19
4 Geophysical Jamboree, AugustSeptember 1957 34
5 * Romania, October 1957 40
6 T7i0 New Moons 54
7 What the Satellites Revealed 77
8 Cosmic Rays 88
9 TTze North Magnetic Pole, June 1958 103
10 - The Earth's Magnetic Field no
11 - The Upper Atmosphere 119
12 Aurora 131
13 - Landfalls in a Frozen Sea, June 1958 145
xvi CONTENTS
14 - Greenland and the 'World's Ice, June 1958 154
15 Brussels to Moscow, July 1958 170
16 - Gravity and the Earth's 'Wobble 179
17 The Soviet Union, August 1958 191
18 Earthquakes 214
19 China, Taiwan, and Japan, September 1958 227
20 The Oceans 244
21 Hawaii and New Zealand, November 1958 265
22 Fall-out 276
23 Antarctica, November 1958 288
24 The Weather 310
25 - The Year's Harvest 320
TABLES 333
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING 347
INDEX follows page 3 50
ILLUSTRATIONS
The world of the International Geophysical Year 11
Spectrum of sound waves 22
Electro-magnetic spectrum 24.
Major solar activity 28
Temperature variation and sun-spot activity 30
The far side of the moon 74
The earth and the inner and outer Van Allen belts 78
High-speed electrons in the Van Allen and Argus belts 79
Fundamental particles and simple atoms 90
Collision of cosmic-ray particle with a nucleus 93
Shower of secondary cosmic rays 95
The earth 9 s magnetic field 98
Cross-section of our galaxy 99
Map of part of the Canadian Arctic 106
Cross-section of the earth's interior 1 1 1
The sun's toroidal fields 115
Variation in the earth's magnetic field 117
Phenomena in nearby space 120
The ionospheric sounder 122
Reflection of radio signals by layers of the atmosphere 124
Distribution of aurora borealis 132
XV111
ILLUSTRATIONS
Distribution of aurora australis 134
A corpuscular stream 136
A corpuscular stream passing the earth 138
Distribution and frequency of auroral displays 141
Map of Arctic Sea 148
The ice surface of Greenland 156
The ice surface of Antarctica 163
Bedrock of Antarctica below the ice sheet 165
Variations in the strength of gravity in the Baltic Sea 182
The continental fracture system 221
Cross-section of the earth 9 s crust and the upper part of
the mantle 223
Profile across the mid-ocean ridge 247
Vertical section through the Atlantic Ocean from pole
to pole 256
Diagram of deep circulation in the ocean basins 259
Position of the Antarctic Convergence 262
Cross-section of part of the Pacific Ocean 269
Changes in carbon-i4 in New Zealand 279
Strontium-go in the atmosphere 282
Strontium-go activity in rainfall 284
Structure of upper atmosphere as revealed by fall-out 285
IGY stations in Antarctica 294
Storms on the Antarctic continent in 1958 308
Atmospheric circulation ^ X r
Jet-streams in the northern hemisphere ^6
Cross-section through a front and a jet-stream 317
PLATES
FOLLOWING PAGE
Sun-spots (Mount "Wilson and Mount Palomar Ob-
servatories} 40
Sun-spots (detail) (Princeton University Observatory) 40
Solar telescope in Moscow (U.S.S.R. IGY) 40
Coronagraph and spectrograph (National Academy of
Sciences IGY) 40
Solar flare 40
Balloon, parachute, and mounted instrument package
(U.S. Navy) 40
Rocket firing during eclipse (U. S. Navy) 40
Test firing of Vanguard II (U. S. Navy) 40
Vanguard satellite being installed (U. S. Navy) 40
Explorer VII before launching (U. S. Army) 40
Lunar Probe III ( U. S. Air Force ) 40
Soviet research rocket (U.S.S.R. IGY) 40
Sputnik III ( U.S.S.R. IG Y ) 40
Aerobee rocket (U. S. Army) 40
Far side of the moon (U.S.S.R. Information Service) 136
Crab nebula (Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Ob-
servatories) 136
xx PLATES
Greek Moonwatch (Greek IGY) 136
Indiana Moonwatch team (Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory) 136
Solar radio telescope, Australia (W. N. Christiansen,
Radiophysics Laboratory C.S.R.I.O., Sidney,
Australia) 136
Baker-Nunn-Schmidt Camera, Australia (Australian
Weapons Research Establishment) 136
Jodrell Bank telescope (United Kingdom Information
Service) 136
The all-sky camera (National Research Council of
Canada) 136
Aurora photo with all-sky camera (National Research
Council of Canada) 136
Auroral forms in Alaska (/. W. Wright) 136
lonization counter for cosmic rays (U.S.S.R. IGY) 136
Cosmic-ray star caused by collision with nucleus (Na-
tional Research Council of Canada) 136
Weather balloon (U. S. IGY) 136
Spectrophotometer measuring ozone (U. S. IGY) 136
Czech earth-tides equipment (Csav Geofysikalniustav) 232
Royal Thai observer in field (Thai IGY) 232
Soviet seismograph (U.S.S.R. IGY) 232
Mount Vesuvius (American Museum of Natural His-
tory) 232
Lloyd V. Berkner 232
Young Soviet scientist (U.S.S.R. IGY) 232
Chapman and Bardin ( U.S.S.R. IG Y ) 232
Author and Soviet scientists (Photograph by Chief
Engineer Nicolas Fonfaev ) 232
Soviet drifting station (University of Washington) 232
Ice-coring on Blue Glacier, Olympic Mountains (Uni-
versity of Washington) 232
Henrietta glacier (Royal Canadian Air Force) 232
Valley glaciers on Ellesmere Island (Royal Canadian
Air Force) 232
PLATES
xxi
Ship in spring ice ( Canadian 'Department of Transport ) 232
Under-ice living quarters (U. S. Army) 232
Stratigraphy of crevasse walls (U, S. National Academy
of Science) 232
Drilling in Antarctic ice (U. S. Navy) 328
Ice cave in Antarctic (U. S. Navy) 328
Hummocky sea ice ( U. S. National Academy of Sciences
IGY) 328
Little America V ( U. S. Navy) 328
Snow-covered facilities at "Little America (17. S. Navy) 328
Annual layers in ice cliffs (Australian National Antarc-
tic Research Expedition) 328
Sno-Gats at Ellsworth Station (17. S. National Acad-
emy of Sciences IGY) 328
Soviet tractor train ( U.S.S.R. IGY) 328
Lowering coring apparatus from the Vema (Lamont
Geological Observatory, Columbia University) 328
Lowering Nansen bottle to collect water samples (U. S.
IGY) 328
Recovering Soviet double coring tube (U.S.S.R.
IGY)
Soviet oceanographic research ship, Vityaz (U.S.S.R.
IGY)
TABLES
1 Countries which participated in the IGY 333
2 Bureau of the Comite Special de VAnnee
Geophysique Internationale 334
3 IGY subjects and their reporters 334
4 Members of GSAGI 335
5 Record of artificial satellites and space probes
launched in 1957-1958 335
6 Record of artificial satellites and planets
launched in 1959 336
7 Record of artificial satellites placed in orbit
January i, 1960, to April 12, 1961 337
8 Features of Sputnik satellites 338
9 - Features of Vanguard satellites 339
10 - Features of Explorer and Score satellites 340
11 Features of Pioneer space probes and planet 341
12 Features of Discoverer satellites 342
13 Features of Lunik space probes and satellites 343
14 Times and places of Argus experiments 343
15 Radioactive isotopes created by cosmic-ray
bombardment of the atmosphere 344
16 True direction of magnetic compass at London 344
17 Changes in the strength of the earth's magnetic
field 345
18 IGY stations in the Antarctic 345
19 Some of the world's record cold temperatures 346
G^V"
1
THE YEAR OF
THE NEW MOONS
CHAPTER I
THE INTERNATIONAL
GEOPHYSICAL YEAR
JUNE 1957
On the evening of June 30, 1957, I sat on the darkening
veranda of our summer cottage on the Georgian Bay of Lake
Huron, waiting for midnight and the opening of the Interna-
tional Geophysical Year. There in the wilds I had no measure-
ments to make, and I knew that nothing would mark the
event; but it was exciting to contemplate what the next eight-
een months would bring.
A night breeze stirred through the pines; ripples lapped
against the bare rock shore and bumped a boat against the
dock. Mosquitoes shrilled on the screening. From far on the
other side of the bay came the drone of an outboard motor and
from the rocks behind the kitchen the clang and scrape of a
metal plate as the children's pet racoon deliberated over her
dinner.
Above the low rocky coast; the Milky Way foamed down the
seas of heaven like scud marking the set moon's wake, and a
thousand stars twinkled as buoys to chart its passage. Their
4 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
brilliance against the blackness of the night is a light to com-
fort us in darkness, and marks the shores of man's vision of
paradise. In all religions and mythologies the seat of the Al-
mighty and the homes of the blessed have been placed in the
unfathomed depths of space.
The mysteries of the heavens were enough to achieve this
veneration when the firmament was considered to be just an
illuminated back-drop to the solar system; by how much
should our wonder and awe have grown now that we appre-
ciate how vastly more immense and grand the universe is!
Until the time of Kepler, man believed that the sun rose and
set for him; he regarded the heavens as a spectacle mounted for
his delectation; and he considered any startling event a mira-
cle. Today we see ourselves as dust in a galaxy of greater size
and intricacy than anyone could have dared imagine had it not
been revealed by careful observation and precise logic. No
longer is our admiration for the beauty of night limited to the
few thousand stars that the best eye can see. In our imagina-
tion we can now visualize the Milky Way as a hundred billion
suns, each like our own, and all of them forming but a single
galaxy, just one spiral nebula, among uncounted and un-
countable clusters of other similar galaxies stretching in or-
dered myriads beyond the farthest reach of telescopes.
By any material measure, we are of far less consequence
than a speck of dust in a house. From a small room with an
earth and a sun and a thousand stars painted on the walls, our
universe has expanded into a city of indescribable elegance,
vastness, and regularity in which our galaxy, our sun, our
earth, and ourselves occupy a humble place.
Our progress in science has not succeeded in giving us a
complete understanding of this universe, nor is it likely ever to
do so, but by disclosing to us so much more than was at first
obvious it has served to put our ignorance and insignificance
into perspective. If our discoveries have shown us how small
INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR 5
is our understanding and how limited our comprehension, they
have also, by revealing the regularity and pattern of the uni-
verse, made us aware that through systematic study we can
follow most closely the path of creation and see the steps by
which the unseen Creator trod.
Just as study has demonstrated that in addition to being
larger the universe is also more regular than had been thought,
so do other investigations uncover hidden meaning in the
nature of all matter, energy, and life. Everywhere in science
modern tools and ideas bring to light the elegant and orderly
skeins by which nature builds the glory that we see about us,
knit in regular patterns from simple stitches. Her apparently
infinite materials are made of only a few million chemicals.
These are not unrelated substances, but the compounds of
one hundred and three elements. Even the elements are not
distinct; each consists of electrons, protons, neutrons, and
energy arranged in a special pattern. The colours that we see in
such a myriad of shades are but electro-magnetic vibrations of
varying wave-lengths. Indeed, we may think of all nature in
terms of music, as infinitely ingenious and elaborate variations
on a few simple themes.
It is plain that creation was not haphazard, but orderly. The
way to understand creation better is, therefore, to follow the
pattern it has set, which clearly is the road of intellect. It might
seem presumptuous to suggest that in science man has found
the way to map the path of the Creator, and conceited to claim
that man by mathematical logic has solved a few riddles of the
universe, thereby achieving a modicum of control over its
functions. The scientist, however, is saved from the sin of
Lucifer by an ever-increasing awe which holds his self-conceit
in check. If science has given unexpected power to man, it has
to an even greater extent revealed the unimagined glory of God.
Man was endowed with intellect as well as feeling, and it
behoves him to use his intellect to govern himself and his
6 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
environment. The International Geophysical Year was con-
ceived as the greatest attempt men have yet made to band
together to examine, without passion or undue rivalry, their
environment, their home and ultimate resource, the earth.
Men, it is true, have studied the earth for thousands of years
and have discovered much more about it than about the un-
seen universe around us, but these studies have been local
efforts, each limited to a particular ocean, mountain peak, or
storm, or to a single aspect of the earth its rocks, its magnet-
ism, or its atmosphere. The International Geophysical Year
was to be different, not because it would be bigger, though it
had to be, but because it would be an attempt to be all-
embracing, to fit the earth into the pattern of the universe, to
relate its parts together, to discover hidden order, and to
interpret the whole in relation to space, and especially, to that
greatest influence in nearby space, the sun.
This far-flung and happy enterprise had not sprung into
being unannounced; it was the child of two sets of parents.
On the one hand it was a direct descendant of the First and
Second International Polar Years of 1882-3 an d 1 93 2 ~3; ai *d
on the other hand it was an offspring of the international
scientific unions, the dozen bodies through which world scien-
tists have been meeting regularly since 1919. So great and
successful an operation could not have been conceived, let
alone smoothly executed, without the experience thus be-
queathed to it.
The First International Polar Year (IPY i ) was proposed by
Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht of Austria and organized in 1879
at a meeting of the International Meteorological Congress. A
committee under the chairmanship of G. Newmayer of Ham-
burg and later H. Wild of St. Petersburg laid plans, established
rules for taking observations, fixed the duration of IPY i to be
from August i, 1882, to September i, 1883, and later published
the results. Eleven nations sent expeditions to twelve bases
INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR 7
around the Arctic and to two others in the Southern Ocean.
The conditions prevailing then were less than ideal. So little
was known of the polar regions that not all the bases were
well sited; for instance, the two antarctic stations in South
Georgia and Cape Horn were far removed from the south
magnetic pole, which they had been particularly established to
investigate. Arrangements for pairs of stations to photograph
the aurora were made under the supposition that it appears at
a height of 5 miles, but the results were poor because the
aurora was discovered always to form above a height of 60
miles. Some parties were ill-equipped for the rigors they had to
face. There was no radio by which to communicate or provide
time signals. Only the French party used cameras to photo-
graph automatically the readings on their instruments.
In spite of these handicaps, the achievements were great.
The first clear ideas of the distribution of the aurora borealis
and of polar weather were obtained. Fortunately, the consider-
able sun-spot activity during this period was accompanied by
the two greatest magnetic storms ever recorded in high lati-
tudes. The observations of these storms proved their value
forty years later in 1926 when Sydney Chapman, in developing
his hypothesis that currents flow in the upper atmosphere,
used these records to calculate the strength and location of the
currents. In 1882 the southern stations observed a transit of
Venus across the face of the sun, and many stations recorded
the effects of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 large
tidal waves and atmospheric disturbances that travelled twice
around the earth. The results were published in a shelf-full of
quarto volumes.
Interest in international co-operation in polar exploration
then subsided for forty-five years, but revived in time for
scientists to plan a Second Polar Year (IPY 2) to celebrate the
golden jubilee of the first. The International Union of
Geodesy and Geophysics, which had been formed in 1919,
8 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
played a major role in organizing and financing IPY 2. In
particular, it arranged for the publication of a Photographic
Atlas of Auroral Forms to guide observers, provided many
instruments, and financed to a large extent the publication of
results.
The IPY 2 was conducted in the same way as the IPY i.
Again the greatest efforts were devoted to the study of meteor-
ology, magnetism, and aurora in the Arctic, but more countries
and more branches of science were included. The original
resolutions were distributed in eight languages, and eventually
forty-four countries agreed to participate, although only half
of them organized expeditions.
The IPY 2 was handicapped by being held during a period
of minimum sun-spot activity and in the midst of a great
economic depression. It is doubtful whether it could have been
successful without the great efforts of its president, D. la Cour
of Denmark, and the financial support which he persuaded the
Rockefeller Foundation to provide.
Unlike its predecessor, however, the IPY 2 generated an
interest that continued over the years, and many of the
younger men who took part in it played important roles in the
IGY. One of them, J, Bartels, has said: 'IPY 2 was like
chamber music compared to the symphony of the present
IGY." To extend the metaphor, IPY i might be likened to
several soloists, each playing the same tune independently.
Nevertheless, each attempt provided both tangible results and
the experience upon which the next effort could be built.
The second parents of the IGY were the dozen scientific
unions which had been formally organized in 1919. Each
union deals with one branch of science and enables scientists
from all over the world to meet together regularly. The unions
particularly concerned with the IGY were the International
Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG); the Interna-
tional Astronomical Union (IAU); TUnion Radio Scientifi-
INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR 9
que Internationale (URSI); the International Geographical
Union (IGU); and the International Union of Pure and Ap-
plied Physics (I UP AP) .
These unions provided the forums at which the initial plans
were discussed, and the International Council of Scientific
Unions (an administrative body comprising the chief officers
of the unions) co-ordinated their efforts and established the
Comit6 Special de TAnn6e G6ophysique Internationale
( CSAGI ) to run the project.
The infant protege was conceived at a dinner party on the
evening of April 5, 1950. J. A. Van Allen, after whom the Van
Allen belts in space have since been named, had invited half a
dozen friends to his home in a suburb of Washington to meet
Sydney Chapman, the well-known English geophysicist, who
was in the process of moving the chief scene of his activities
from the University of Oxford to the United States. This re-
markable man, who was to become the president of the
CSAGI, is an indefatigable traveller and a firm believer in
strenuous physical exercise. His hosts have often been hard
put to find a convenient swimming pool for his accustomed
swim at 7 o'clock each morning. A typical story told of him
concerns two consecutive meetings held in 1939. He had at-
tended the first in Chicago, and when he did not immediately
turn up at the second in Washington, someone inquired:
"Where's Sydney Chapman?" Those who knew him replied:
"Just give him time, and he'll be along; you know, it takes three
or four days to bicycle from Chicago to Washington!"
All the men who met that evening to do him honour had
taken part in the IPY 2 and were destined to be leaders of the
IGY. During the evening Lloyd V. Berkner proposed that
instead of waiting for the traditional fifty years, they hold the
third Polar Year on the silver anniversary of the second. He
pointed out that the exigencies of war had developed over-
snow vehicles and air-support techniques which would enable
10 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
scientists to study the Antarctic, that electronic instruments
had been infinitely improved during the past twenty-five years,
that 1957-8 would be a year of sun-spot maximum, and the
most persuasive argument of all that if they were to wait a
full fifty years for the International Polar Year 3, very few of
those present would be in fit shape to enjoy it.
By October 1951, CSAGI had been established and the
planning for this momentous scientific endeavour begun. Be-
cause its scope was to be so much greater than that of its
predecessors, it was christened the International Geophysical
Year rather than the International Polar Year 3.
Altogether no less than sixty-seven countries had agreed to
participate, and their national committees were represented
on CSAGI, but the main burden was carried by a small bureau
and by the reporters who were appointed to co-ordinate the
efforts of each of the fourteen scientific programs. Their names
and those of the participating countries are given at the end of
this book.
In a series of meetings, both of CSAGI as a whole and of
smaller groups, suggestions were thrashed out. The reporters
for the programs indicated what observations they felt were
required; representatives of the various countries tried to ob-
tain support for these programs and in many cases made
counter-proposals. After a number of exchanges, unified plans
were formulated to make the best use of available resources.
It was soon realized that even with the considerable support
which was forthcoming the whole world could not be covered
with equal intensity. Efforts were concentrated, therefore, in
the polar regions, in the equatorial zone, and along several
belts joining pole to pole, one through Europe and Africa, an-
other through the Americas, and a third through east Asia and
Australia. To concentrate activities further, certain days were
appointed for special efforts that could not be carried on all the
time. On such days rockets would be fired simultaneously and
The World of the International Geophysical Year. Countries in black
did not participate in the IGY. Heavy lines show the paths of totality
of solar eclipses during the IGY (1957-8) and IGC (1959)- Broken
lines show the author's travels during that time.
12 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
additional upper-air balloons would be sent aloft. Some of
these "world days" were fixed in advance, but plans were
sufficiently flexible so that all resources could be focused at
short notice on the study of an unexpected scientific event
for instance, a large outburst on the sun.
To facilitate the reduction of results, uniform instructions
were prepared, and a whole series of annals published to pro-
mulgate them.
Finally, it was agreed that all data obtained in the program
were to be freely circulated. Three World Data Centres were
established: A in Washington, B in Moscow, and C divided
among several European cities. Every country sent observa-
tions to at least one World Data Centre, which then was
charged with distributing them to the others.
The first year of the planned eighteen-month period was so
successful that the Soviet Union proposed in August 1958 that
the work be continued through 1959. A reduced effort was
agreed upon and called the International Geophysical Co-
operation (IGC, 1959).
When the projects were ended, CSAGI was dissolved and
the members thanked for their invaluable efforts on behalf of
science and of mankind. Those activities which could be han-
dled by the unions were once more entrusted to them. The
Comit6 Internationale Geophysique (GIG) was formed, with
the same indefatigable secretary as the IUGG, Georges La
clav^re, to wind up the IGY and get its results published, and
to continue reduced programs of international co-operation.
In three regions nearby space, the oceans, and Antarctica
research had been initiated on so broad a scale that special
committees were organized to continue administrative ar-
rangements.
It is my hope that in this book the reader may learn some-
thing of the important discoveries made during the IGY and
INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR 13
IGC and that he will be able to share the excitement of the
scientists who were fortunate enough to have engaged in this
exploration of the earth. Perhaps with them he will feel mo-
mentarily lifted above the earth and see the whole world in
perspective. By launching satellites into outer space, the IGY
has disclosed the immensity of the vast and hostile space that
surrounds our world; perhaps in the face of this immensity he
may discover the essential unity of all mankind.
CHAPTER 2
COLORADO
JULY 195?
On July i I had to leave the tranquillity of Georgian Bay to
fly to the University of Colorado to hold a series of seminars in
physics and geology for summer-school students, and give a
public lecture. In July 1957 public lectures on the International
Geophysical Year were very fashionable.
I flew over the great American plains to Denver. The im-
mensity and fertility of that checkerboard of fields which con-
stitutes the North American prairies always amazes me. Flying
west, whether to Edmonton or to Texas, one passes for hours
over plains laid out in one-mile squares that seem to stretch
endlessly in every direction.
Watching, I soon grew tired of the monotony and turned to
read or eat or doze; when I looked again, subtle changes had
interposed. The green had faded to yellow, brown, even
orange. A great river twisted its brown flood across the map.
Occasionally, a speckled town broke the pattern with a finer
mesh of streets. Roads and railways converged and parted,
each as fine and as smoothly curved as a fishing-line across the
floor.
C OLO R ADO 15
It was at once a familiar and unknown land to me: familiar
from frequent flights across it, and four trips by automobile as
a student; yet strange because I had never stayed there, but
like a migrant goose had chiefly seen it from above.
Over Nebraska I saw again the flowing dust I remembered
so well. At first it was no more than a haze, a shimmer, an
almost imperceptible mist over the land. I thought it was but
a trick that the vibration of the plane was playing on my eyes.
Slowly it grew clearer and more dense until it formed into soft,
grey-yellow clouds flowing in gentle puffs across the fields. In
1934 and 1935 I had choked in clouds such as these, seen the
dried leaves of the unripened corn blown across the highway,
and the dust piled in the lee of sheds and f enceposts.
From 18,000 feet above, one is not part of the land, but one
can see how the sun beats down and how its vagaries distribute
drought or flood, life or disaster, wealth or ruin, prosperity or
despair to the world below. Here, on the border-zone between
the green fields of the east and the buff deserts of the west, the
power and intransigence of the sun are very real.
In Denver, Professor Charles Morris met me, and we drove
to the red-brick campus at Boulder, at the foot of the brick-red
mountain slabs which fence the main Rockies.
A few days of lecturing quickly passed, and after them came
my reward. Two of the professors of geology drove me back
into the mountains to meet their graduate students and to see
their field work. Behind Boulder we plunged into the wall of
mountains, up a canyon cut by a bucking, white-crested
stream, and drove smoothly up along it in a manner that would
have amazed the hardy fur-traders and prospectors who first
entered these fastnesses. Where once a mule-trail skirted the
torrent's wall there is now a four-lane highway; where men
ached and sweated under packs and headstraps towards the
peaks diesel trucks now pant over Loveland's i2,ooo-foot pass;
where once were gold mines there are now $10 uranium cures
16 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
for bursitis. In the bar of the Leadville Hotel where miners
once toasted Baby Doe Tabor one can airmail a picture post-
card home, or order fresh sea-food specials. Even the Indians,
hunted no longer, sell moccasins and foot-long hot dogs. At
gasoline stations tame bears drink pop by the bottlef ul.
We left the highway and by dusty back roads entered the
heart of the mountains where the hillsides are still lush green
and the gentians bottle-blue in the clear, cool mountain air.
We passed the ghosts of the old mining camps Aspen, Ely,
Park City, Leadville, Tintic but saw only one active mine. It
is strange that so great a mining state as Colorado should so
quickly have yielded up its riches, treasure which went to build
Denver and New York. This presages the day when the
world's stock of easily accessible minerals will be exhausted,
and its remaining store will be more difficult and more ex-
pensive to acquire,
My companions, Professors Larry Walker and Warren
Longley, showed me the magnificent Colorado scenery and to
its beauty added interest by pointing out great folds in the
rocks, necks of former volcanoes, and scars of ancient earth-
quakes. Weathering had laid bare the bones and tissue of the
earth, and erosion had exposed sections of the crust to view.
The core of one range of mountains was a great block of
granite and gneiss uplifted to 14,000 feet and denuded of its
cover. On the lower slopes multicoloured shales and sand-
stones lay in twisted layers where they had slipped off this
great protrusion. These sights fascinated me, for the study of
the causes of mountain-building and the nature of continental
structure is my own particular scientific specialty.
Because the solid part of the earth changes so slowly, its
study was only marginally included in the program of the IGY,
which dealt particularly with the mobile aspects of the earth
that would show significant changes within an eighteen-month
period. Therefore, I was not as preoccupied during the IGY
COLORADO X y
with my own special research programs, as many geophysicists
were, and when the chance came I was free to travel widely.
At the same time, because I knew that the key to the physics
of mountain-building lies in a consideration of the earth as a
whole and in a comparison of the features of all mountains, I
welcomed the opportunity to further my own work by going to
see as many mountains as possible.
We drove on to the high-altitude solar observatory which the
National Bureau of Standards and the University of Colorado
maintain on one of the highest ridges of the Rocky Mountains
near Climax. The place, with its clear skies and its elevation of
13,000 feet, high above much of the atmosphere, provides
particularly good conditions for observing the sun. This solar
observatory is a fine example of the 120 throughout the world
which maintained a continuous watch upon the sun during the
ICY.
The instruments that we saw were of three types. There
were radio telescopes equipped with a great dish of wire net-
ting to catch the radio noise emitted by the sun. There was an
ordinary telescope fitted with a dark-red filter specially de-
signed to reduce the glare and to make visible the great out-
bursts of hydrogen gas, called solar flares, which occur ir-
regularly on the sun. The flames of erupting hydrogen are red
and can best be seen through these filters, which eliminate
almost all other light. Every minute a camera took a photo-
graph of the sun through this telescope. Since much of the
equipment was automatic, most of the scientists were not at
the observatory but in their offices in Boulder, seeking to
interpret the results. A young Austrian astronomer was on
duty, and he led us along a foot-path through the mountain
glade to see the third and most interesting telescope of all. This
telescope was of the type invented by the great French as-
tronomer, Lyot, for studying solar prominences. At one time
these jets of incandescent gas which constantly play about the
i8 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
surface of the sun could only be seen at its edges during total
solar eclipses, but Lyot devised a means of placing a metal disc
far up the tube of telescopes in such a manner that an artificial
eclipse would be created.
Our guide allowed us to look at these prominences. The
black shadow of the disc exactly covered the bright face of the
sun. In the sun's atmosphere we could see great bursts of flame
darting out and curving in graceful paths before falling back
again. Seeing the motion of these vast flames and knowing
that many were larger than the whole earth, we realized vividly
with what colossal speed and energy they were travelling
and how violent is the activity of the sun.
Afterwards, as we turned to walk the mountain paths in
sunshine, the beauty of the morning was enhanced by our
awareness, dim though it might be, of the wonders of the uni-
verse which the efforts of generations of scientists have re-
vealed. I have endeavoured, in recounting my travels during
the IGY, to communicate to the reader the sense of fascination
that accompanied me. To this end, I have interwoven the ac-
counts of my stop-overs with chapters explaining the main
programs of the IGY. We can do no better than start by
considering the sun itself.
CHAPTER 3
THE SUN
The sun is master of our material life. From its light and heat
we derive all our vital powers; without it there would be neither
daylight nor seasons, wind nor weather. All would be dark and
still and unimaginably cold, for the earth is but the sun's tiny
child and creature. Because the sun's influence upon the sur-
face of the earth is so great, a careful study of the sun played
an essential and indeed dominant part in the International
Geophysical Year.
Our first impression that the sun is a huge furnace is correct
enough. True, its fires are not burning in air; their immense
heat is generated by hydrogen atoms combining with one an-
other to form helium atoms, with the resultant emission of the
vast energy of nuclear fusion. The sun is, in fact, an enormous
nuclear reactor, not fissioning uranium as man-made reactors
do, but fusing hydrogen as men hope the reactors of the future
will. The temperature at the centre of the sun has been es-
timated to be thirty million degrees Fahrenheit and the pres-
sure three hundred billion pounds per square inch.
The sun, like other furnaces, emits radiation and jets of gas.
Some radiation, in the form of light, heat, and weak ultra-
20 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
violet rays, reaches us every day. It was suspected, however,
that other rays of the sun are prevented from reaching us by
the earth's atmosphere acting as a shield, for the aurora gives
us evidence that the top of the atmosphere is at times violently
agitated by blasts of gases or radiation which cannot break
through to the earth. The light, heat, and radio waves which
we receive from the sun penetrate the shield of the earth's
atmosphere through two so-called "windows," and these rays
are the only ones directly observable from the earth's surface.
This shielding effect of the atmosphere has made it difficult for
us to observe the sun, for even on a cloudless day the atmos-
phere distorts our view and makes the details in photographs
fuzzy. Like a gardener in a greenhouse in winter, we look out
through misty windows, not knowing how cold it is outside nor
from which direction the wind is blowing.
As Sir Isaac Newton said, "the only remedy is a most serene
and quiet air such as may perhaps be found on the tops of the
highest mountains above the grosser clouds." This ideal was
attained just before the IGY when astronomers from the Paris
Observatory and Princeton University sent balloons carrying
12-inch telescopes into the stratosphere, the rarefied outermost
layer of the earth's atmosphere. This is the limit that a balloon
can reach, since it must be lighter than the air surrounding it
and so can never rise above the whole atmosphere. One of the
most important achievements of the IGY was to send artificial
satellites and rockets above the atmosphere to heights from
which a clear, unfiltered view of the sun could be obtained.
The gardener had at last been able to put his head right out of
the window.
Rocket astronomy involves immense problems and great
expense. A rocket is near the top of its trajectory only for a very
few minutes, and travels rapidly, rotating and tumbling as it
goes. If, in spite of these unstable conditions, the instruments
are able to obtain records, there is the further problem of re-
THE SUN 21
covering the records intact. The instruments themselves are
generally destroyed. The Ws that were first used after the
war could carry a load of 'up to a ton, but most of the other
rockets available for research can take useful loads of less than
200 pounds each* Satellites were even more severely limited
when the IGY began, but within three and a half years of the
first launching, sophisticated instruments and the comments
of the first cosmonaut have enabled mankind at last to en-
compass the true appearance of the naked universe. The rec-
ords transmitted back to earth, combined with those made
continuously at many ground observatories (like the one at
Climax) , have given us a new and clearer understanding of the
sun.
It now appears that space, at any rate around the earth and
sun, has a "climate" as changeable as that on the earth's sur-
face. It is not, as was formerly supposed, an inert near-vacuum,
still and cold. In their thin but violent way, the regions of
nearer space are continually shaken and buffeted by a bom-
bardment from the sun of electro-magnetic waves of many
frequencies, called radiation, and of high-speed atoms and
fragments of atoms which strike the earth's atmosphere in
tenuous blasts of "solar wind." To understand electro-magnetic
radiation better, we shall compare it to another kind of radia-
tion, sound waves, with which we are more familiar.
Everyone knows that the beating of a drumhead, the bowing
of a violin, or the blowing of a horn create vibrations that
travel outwards in all directions through the air to strike our
ears. Each note has a characteristic number of vibrations per
second, called frequency. Thus middle C has a frequency of
512 vibrations each second, and high C 1,024. Notes that we
recognize as musical have frequencies ranging between 20,000
vibrations a second for high notes and 20 a second for the
lowest. Above these frequencies are ultra-sonic vibrations,
inaudible to us but just as real. Below these frequencies we
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THE SUN 23
distinguish individual beats and cease to regard the effect as
music. This is an idiosyncrasy of ours, for the ticking of a clock
or the beating of a heart is just as regular, although less fre-
quent, than the vibration of musical notes. There is, in effect,
a great spectrum of mechanical vibrations, and our ears only
hear or recognize as music the part within what we may call
the "audible window/'
A flash of lightning and the accompanying clap of thunder
enable us to time the speed of sound. If a flash occurs 1,000
feet away and we hear the clap a second later, we know that
the sound has travelled at the rate of 1,000 feet a second. All
sounds travel in air at the same speed. When middle C is
played, the instrument vibrates 512 times a second, and each
vibration will have travelled about 2 feet before the next starts
out. This distance is called the wave-length, and wave-length
multiplied by frequency gives velocity. Thus, the higher the
frequency of a note, the shorter its wave-length. Either of these
numbers, frequency or wave-length, defines one particular
note and tells us two things about it: which note on the scale
is being played, and its pitch, whether high or low, treble or
bass.
Just as mechanical vibrations include heart beats, earth-
quake waves, sound waves, music and inaudible ultra-sonic
vibrations which seem so diverse to us but which only differ
in frequency and wave-length, so are radio waves, heat, light,
ultra-violet, and X-rays all related. They are all electro-
magnetic waves of different frequencies, distinguished from
one another as the music of a piccolo is distinguished from that
of a double bass. These electro-magnetic waves travel at the
astonishing velocity of 186,000 miles, or 300,000,000 metres,
each second. As in the case of sound waves, frequency mul-
tiplied by wave-length gives velocity. Thus, radio waves broad-
cast at a frequency of 1,000,000 vibrations a second (called
one megacycle) each have a wave-length of 300 metres. The
3
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THE SUN 2 ~
two multiplied together give the velocity. Either number de-
fines a particular wave.
Radio wave-lengths in the broadcast range are measured in
metres, short radio waves in inches, heat waves in hundredths
of an inch, and visible light in hundred thousandths of an
inch; ultra-violet and X-rays have shorter wave-lengths still.
All vibrate an enormous number of times a second. Radio
waves are defined in terms either of wave-length or of fre-
quency, but short waves are usually specified in terms of
wave-length measured in Angstrom units, each of which is one
hundred millionth of a centimetre.
We enjoy light and colour in our lives, just as we enjoy
symphonic music, without thinking what constitutes either;
but physicists and composers find it useful to analyse what
they see or hear. Sunlight, like a symphony, is a great melange,
but it can be broken into its parts by a prism. We see examples
of this in the coloured flashes of pure light from diamonds,
dewdrops, and rainbows. Each individual colour in a rainbow
represents light of a particular frequency and wave-length and
may be likened to a note on the piano. When a musician hears
a note, whether it is played alone or as part of a symphony, he
can tell two things about it: what note it is, and whether it is
treble or bass. A physicist, too, can tell two things about an
individual colour or "line" of light. He can say what element
was excited to create it and how hot that element was at the
time. The lines due to a single element may be compared, for
example, to all the "C's" or all the "D's" on the scale; and the
temperature of the element is comparable to the pitch of
sound.
C notes have characteristic frequencies, such as 32, 64, 128,
256, 512, 1024 vibrations a second; similarly the element
hydrogen, if suitably excited, gives rise to lines of light of
characteristic wave-lengths, including those of 1216, 4340,
4861, and 6563 Angstrom units. It was the strong red line of
26 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
6563 Angstrom units, created by fast-moving hydrogen gas on
the sun, which astronomers saw through the telescope at
Climax as they watched for solar flares. Other light could not
penetrate the filters in the telescope.
By analysing light, spectroscopists can determine the ele-
ments present in the source. The gas helium, indeed, takes its
name from the Greek word for sun because its spectral lines
were discovered in sunlight before anyone had found the ele-
ment on earth. The temperature of the source can be estimated
by noting which are the dominant lines among those peculiar
to each element. If the source is only warm, it emits heat but
no light. We all know this, for we recognize that a red-hot
poker is not as hot as a poker at white heat. As an object is
heated, the dominant radiation changes to shorter and shorter
wave-lengths with higher and higher frequencies until at a
temperature of about 100,000 degrees, the object emits ultra-
violet light, and at about 1,000,000 degrees it emits X-rays.
Below the opposite end of the spectrum lie waves of increas-
ingly longer wave-length and lower frequency called infra-red
and radio waves.
Careful examination and analysis of the light of the sun to
determine which lines are represented enable the spectrosco-
pist to identify not only the elements but also the temperature
of different parts. Until rockets and satellites broke through
the roof of the atmosphere, much of the evidence for this was
indirect, for humans do not notice any but light and heat
waves and are cut off from most of the other waves by the
benign umbrella of the earth's atmosphere. Even the waves
that can penetrate the atmosphere are often partly absorbed,
as the disgruntled sun-bather can attest when clouds come
between him and the sun.
It is well that the earth's atmosphere protects us from the
electro-magnetic energy that floods the universe, for X-rays
and ultra-violet light would produce severe burns which might
THE SUN 27
kill us now and which would certainly have prohibited the
development of living creatures by preventing the formation
of the necessary large molecules.
Through spectroscopy and the satellites and rockets, we
have gained a better idea of the shape and nature of the sun.
It looks a little like the end of a jelly roll. In the middle is the
round yellow photosphere, the part we see every day. This is
separated by the red rim of the chromosphere from the paler
yellow-green corona. And all three are linked by a variety of
eruptions and imperfections, such as sun-spots, solar flares,
and prominences which burst through the outer layers from
the hot interior.
The photosphere has a temperature of about 10,000 degrees
Fahrenheit and radiates most strongly the heat and light waves
and those ultra-violet rays which conveniently enough pene-
trate the atmosphere and reach us through the visible window.
The layer immediately above the photosphere was first seen
in total eclipses as a red rim and was called the chromosphere.
Because the chromosphere is much hotter than the sun's sur-
face, it radiates light of higher frequency. But this ultra-violet
light does not penetrate our atmosphere and so could not be
photographed until rockets carried cameras above the atmos-
phere.
One of the brightest "colours" in the chromosphere is the
invisible ultra-violet light of precisely 1216 Angstrom units.
This wave-length, called the Lyman alpha line, is radiated by
hydrogen at a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees and
so tells astronomers both the composition and the temperature
of the chromosphere.
Above the chromosphere lies the faint but vast corona seen
only during total eclipses. Its strange and awesome brilliance
casts a faint greenish light of unforgettable beauty which
terrified early man. The corona was suspected to be even
hotter than the chromosphere and to emit X-rays of short
28 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
wave-lengths. To prove this supposition, measurements of the
X-ray flux had to be taken above the atmosphere during a
total eclipse, when the rest of the sun would be hidden. On
October 12, 1958, in the only total eclipse during the IGY ? the
necessary data were obtained. The U.S.S. Point Defiance had
been sent to the Danger Islands, in the mid-Pacific, which lay
in the path of totality. As the moon passed in front of the face
F - Flare
S - Sunspot
P - Prominence
FS Flare Surge
Diagrammatic representation of major solar activity.
of the sun, six instrumented rockets were fired in sequence
from the deck of the ship. The information which they tele-
metered back showed that at totality (when both the photo-
sphere and the chromosphere were hidden) the visible and
ultra-violet radiation dropped to a low value, but the X-rays
coming from the still-visible corona continued strong. The
thin corona, more tenuous than most laboratory vacuums,
emits X-rays of wave-lengths of 10 to 100 Angstrom units,
indicating a normal temperature of about 1,000,000 degrees
Centigrade.
The path of totality of an eclipse is usually so narrow that it
T H E S U N 29
rarely lies over important places, but interestingly enough the
same 1958 eclipse at sunset was total over the large telescopes
of the observatory at Santiago, Chile.
Thus far we have been considering the sun in a quiet state.
It is evident to us all that the total heat radiated by the sun
does not vary greatly from year to year. This average state,
however, is interrupted by cyclical and irregular disturbances;
for superimposed on the tremendous background radiation are
many small and irregular variations which, although they do
not greatly influence the sun's heat, produce other terrestrial
effects quite out of proportion to their energy. Among the
varying features are small rising and falling jets of hot gases
called spicules and prominences; much larger, brief outbursts
called solar flares; longer-lived complexes of sun-spots; and
bright patches accompanying them known as faculae and
plages. These erupt from the photosphere through the outer
layers of the sun, knitting them together, and presenting fasci-
nating problems for observation and interpretation. Chief of
these variations are sun-spots, which were first recorded two
thousand years ago by the Chinese. When the sun's brilliance
was partially filtered by mist, they noticed some particularly
large spots and called them "flying birds." Others were ob-
served through the first telescopes, between 1608 and 1615;
Galileo's insistence that they were blemishes on the most per-
fect of heavenly bodies placed him in disfavour with the
Church.
The nature of sun-spots has long intrigued astronomers, and
one of the objectives of the Polar Years and of the IGY was to
try to discover what causes them. The problem has not yet
been fully resolved, but much is now known. Sun-spots grow
and disperse intermittently; they rotate with the sun once every
twenty-seven days and may last for several revolutions. Al-
though they look small on the face of the sun, they are really
vast, a minor one being larger than the earth. Associated with
IGY : The Year of the New Moons
sun-spots are strong magnetic fields; the spots always occur in
pairs, one of north and the other of south magnetic polarity.
They are known to be giant vortices, or funnels, which appear
dark because the gas in them is cooler than the rest of the
surface. It has been recently suggested that these vortices are
parts of belts of rotating gas within the sun which protrude
from its surface to form sun-spots.
36
35
34
33
to
CO
Q
31 -
30-
Average January
Temperature
29
1880 T890 1900
7910 1920
Year
1930 1940 t950 1960
Chart shows temperature in New York vary-
ing with cycles of greatest sun-spot activity.
The number and the position of sun-spots is not constant.
In 1843, a ft er sun-spots had been under observation for more
than two centuries, Heinrich Schwabe reported that they
fluctuate in number and size by periodic cycles averaging a
little more than eleven years. Associated with the sun-spot
cycle are many other interesting effects, such as solar flares,
which tend to increase in number and intensity at sun-spot
THE SUN 31
maxima. By good fortune the IGY coincided with the most
intense maximum yet recorded. These effects were pronounced,
and numerous large solar flares were observed.
A solar flare had first been spotted on September i, 1859, by
Richard Carrington. He had projected an image of the sun on
a screen so that he could sketch a group of giant sun-spots,
when, as he says, he noticed that "within the area of the great
north group, two patches of intensely bright white light broke
out. Seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase and
being somewhat flurried by the surprise, I hastily ran to call
someone to witness the exhibition with me and, on returning
within sixty seconds, was mortified to find that it was already
much changed and enfeebled/' This astonishing event, which
was noticed by at least one other observer, was exceptional.
No solar flare of equal brilliance has been noted in the century
since, and indeed no more were seen until 1892 when
G. E. Hale invented a spectrograph capable of photographing
the sun in the light of a single line.
Flares were found to be great outbursts of hot hydrogen. Be-
cause in temperature and composition they are different from
the rest of the sun's surface, they can be seen, as at Climax,
through a filter which only transmits the particular wave-
length by which they shine most brightly.
Thirty hours after the solar flare, Carrington noticed a size-
able magnetic storm and brilliant displays of aurora, which, he
suggested, had been caused by the flare. There is no doubt now
that he was correct, that solar flares do cause striking effects in
the earth's magnetic field, in aurora, and in radio transmission.
The violence of these outbursts was demonstrated in an experi-
ment performed in California in August 1957. Within a few
minutes of the first observation of a large solar flare, rockets
carrying instruments were fired above the atmosphere. They
recorded X-rays of wave-lengths as short as i or 2 Angstrom
units. Such unusually short wave-lengths indicate that above
32 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
the solar flare temperatures as high as 10,000,000 degrees
Centigrade were being generated in the sun's corona.
Flares vary widely in size and frequency. With few sun-
spots, only one or two small flares, each lasting only a few
minutes, may occur in a month, but during years of peak solar
activity there may be several each day, some of enormous
power, often visible for over an hour. The cause of flares and
their exact nature is not known, but their size, their cata-
strophic nature, and the powerful effects that they have upon
the earth are unmistakable. They are violent explosions which
in a few minutes may grow as large as vast sun-spots and cover
ten billion square miles. By means of these flares the sun
ejects jets of tenuous gas which, moving at hundreds of miles
a second through space, slam into the earth's atmosphere as
gigantic shock waves. The most powerful of them squash the
earth's magnetic field, play havoc with communications, and
induce auroral displays that light up half the earth. These
violent bursts of radiation and atomic particles have been
called solar shock waves, or magnetic typhoons. They con-
stitute one of the major factors disturbing the "climate" of
nearby space and may well prove hazardous for space travel.
Below are listed the effects which flares can produce, but be-
cause the jets of gas are directional and often miss the earth,
not all these phenomena are observed every time.
1. A burst of reddish light, visible through filters, which
reaches the earth in eight minutes. These waves travel 186,000
miles a second.
2. A flash of ultra-violet light which reaches the earth in
eight minutes and produces sudden ionospheric and magnetic
disturbances.
3. A burst of short-wave radio "noise," which also takes
eight minutes to reach the earth.
4. A flux of low-energy cosmic rays, high-speed atoms, and
electrons, which takes half an hour to reach the earth and
THE SUN 33
which has been observed on less than a dozen occasions, most
strongly on February 23, 1956. These particles travel about
50,000 miles a second.
5. A stream of slower atoms and electrons which takes
about twenty-four hours to reach the earth and gives rise to
auroral displays and magnetic and ionospheric effects. These
travel about i ,000 miles a second.
Better understood than solar flares are solar prominences
such as I saw at Climax, These are great clouds and jets of gas,
forever playing over the surface of the sun, rising to heights of
50,000 miles and more, but lacking the strong terrestrial effects
of flares. Presumably this is because they are less violent and
do not escape to bombard the earth's upper atmosphere.
Another interesting point about the sun which was clarified
during the IGY was the nature of the green flash often seen at
sunset and less frequently at sunrise. It had been maintained
by some that this was a momentary optical illusion, but the
observers of the autumn sunset at the south pole station dis-
proved it. There, over the level snow fields, the sun sank so
slowly for the winter night that the green flash was visible for
half an hour. In addition, both Father D. J. K. O'Connell,
director of the Vatican City Observatory, and Professor M.
Minnaert of Holland took photographs and published papers
proving that the green flash is due to diffraction of the sun's
light by the atmosphere. The green flash is as real as the flash
of colour in a diamond or a rainbow.
CHAPTER 4
GEOPHYSICAL
JAMBOREE
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1957
Later in July I returned from Colorado to Toronto to plunge
again into the preparations for the Xlth General Assembly of
the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, which
was to open in Toronto at the end of August. Whereas the
International Geophysical Year was a great but brief world-
wide project in geophysics, the IUGG had long been the less-
publicized but permanent forum for international geophysics.
The IUGG holds a general meeting every three years, and it
tries to distribute these and its smaller meetings fairly among
the sixty member nations.
International science is organized chiefly in two forms, both
with useful but different functions. On the one hand are the
operational agencies, such as in the United Nations, the World
Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organiza-
tion, which were established with the definite objectives of
improving health and forecasting weather. These bodies have
large budgets and permanent staffs; their meetings are at-
GEOPHYSICAL JAMBOREE 35
tended by civil servants and involve the execution of govern-
mental policies. On the other hand are a dozen unions, some
almost a century old, corresponding to the main branches of
science. Their function is to enable scientists to meet and dis-
cuss science. They have official recognition, and government as
well as private scientists attend, but they are not bound by
government policies and diplomatic usages. The fees paid by
the member countries are small and the unions have no per-
manent staffs. They do not carry out broad routine tasks, for
their function is to promote science, not to utilize it. The In-
ternational Union of Geodesy and Geophysics is one of these
unions.
The unions function in three ways. First of all, they main-
tain permanent services and commissions, often located at a
university, where all the records for a particular subject are sent
from all over the world for collation and publication. In the
case of the IUGG there are several such centres for different
subjects. The headquarters for geodetic data is in Paris, and
all observations that might further the task of measuring the
size and shape of the earth are collected there. All records of
earthquakes obtained by six hundred seismological observa-
tories are sent to Strasbourg and Cambridge; a few selected
stations send reports of large earthquakes by cable to Washing-
ton, whence preliminary information is immediately made
available to the press and to relief organizations. Standards for
the analysis of variations in sea water are prepared and main-
tained at Copenhagen; the wobble of the earth's axis is studied
at Naples; geomagnetic data of different kinds are collected at
Gottingen, de Bilt, and Tortosa. Anyone wishing informa-
tion on the world's earthquakes or on geomagnetism may
obtain published summaries, instead of having to write to six
hundred seismological stations or two hundred geomagnetic
observatories.
Because most of this work is done by men and women who
36 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
love to do it, by professors in their spare time and by their
dedicated assistants, astonishingly little cost is involved. It says
a great deal for the devotion and very little for the advertising
acumen of scientists that such extensive work should have
gone on for years with so little support and no public acknowl-
edgement. The budget for the IUGG for 1958 was $80,000,
most of which went for research, publications, and travel ex-
penses. Most of the unions have no paid staff and their head-
quarters is in the office of whichever scientist has been elected
secretary. This frugality may be startling, but it has its re-
wards. The unions, having no large benefactors, are almost
wholly free from interference and can pursue without fear or
favour whatever course a majority of the delegates and mem-
bers decide upon.
The second function of the international unions is to spon-
sor world-embracing ventures in science, such as the Interna-
tional Geophysical Year. The third function is to hold regular
meetings, such as the one in Toronto, which constitute the
chief forums for international exchange by leading scientists.
The Xlth General Assembly was to have met in one of the
American republics. Unfortunately, eighteen months before
the meetings were to take place, its government suffered a
rather violent upheaval, and the scientists there asked to be
relieved of the responsibility. Five or six bales of cablegrams
and letters, and three months later, the bemused geophysicists
of Toronto awoke to the realization that they would be playing
host to the largest meeting of the world's geophysicists to be
held during the IGY. They had but a few months in which to
transform themselves from scientists into convention man-
agers.
Anyone who has ever taken part in one of these affairs
knows the basic requirements for a successful meeting. The
first is a town sufficiently large to absorb the influx of 1,500
people without complete dislocation of its civic housekeeping.
GEOPHYSICAL JAMBOREE 37
Ideally the town should contain a place where the 1,500 people
can be housed and fed within easy reach of the lecture halls in
which they are to meet, give their papers, and hold their
discussions. Unnecessary complications arise when the scien-
tists have to stay in hotels at one side of the city and hold their
meetings five miles away, with heavy traffic in between. The
lecture rooms themselves must provide certain amenities; noth-
ing is more distressing than to attempt to show slides with a
defective lantern in an ill-ventilated room that cannot be
darkened. For the peace of mind and well-being of the dele-
gates there must also be good post offices, an adequate num-
ber of telephones, maps, signs, and information bureaus
staffed by linguists. Facilities must be provided for the press,
since scientists have at last realized that the public has an
interest in what they are doing. Most important of all is the
creation of an easy, friendly atmosphere to dispel the wariness
natural among members of diverse groups. The scientific
papers given during the day are most thoroughly discussed
over drinks or dinner, and the resolutions that must be passed
at formal assemblies are often most easily hammered out at
lunch.
The University of Toronto, with its residences and lecture
halls, was admirably suited to house both delegates and meet-
ings. The committee members could devote themselves, there-
fore, to overcoming mechanical difficulties and to promoting
amity.
Typical of the many mechanical difficulties were the bank-
ing arrangements. On the first day of registration we collected
$20,000 in cash, in every known currency, I think, except gold
bars and wampum.
Ensuring a desirable atmosphere entailed just as much
effort. The three general assemblies preceding this one had
been held in Oslo, in Brussels, and in Rome. Even Toronto's
most ardent admirers would not suggest that as a city it holds
38 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
the historic interest of these three capitals, but we knew we
could rely on the hospitality of its citizens and the beauty of its
surrounding countryside. Lacking a Roman forum to display
to visitors, we would make do with Niagara Falls. The hos-
pitality, too, was unusual. The opening party was an official
reception given by the Province of Ontario, on the face of it a
solemn and ceremonious occasion. It was held in the Royal
Ontario Museum, just around the corner from the university
an admirable location providing both propinquity and
spaciousness. It did not, however, provide the amenities con-
sidered by the caterers as essential to the serving of food and
drink. But these ingenious men were equal to the task. They
took over an ancient Chinese tomb for their kitchen. After the
delegates had made their way past the official reception line,
the first sight that greeted them was a neat maid efficiently
concocting hot hors d'oeuvres in the lee of a stone camel.
To the bewildered eye of the onlooker these large meetings
appear to be a cross between a scientific forum and a circus,
and for the unfortunate scientist involved in their organization
the circus aspect seems to predominate. He may echo the query
of the public: "Why hold these troublesome and expensive
meetings merely to allow scientists to listen to a lot of papers
that they could equally well read in any of a number of schol-
arly publications in the peace and quiet of their own libraries?"
The answer is simple. These gatherings further the interna-
tionalism of science since they provide continuing opportuni-
ties for scientists to meet each other, to learn of each other's
work, and to cross national boundaries and see how others live
and work. The question I am most frequently asked in connec-
tion with the IGY is whether there was a genuine exchange of
information between nations and especially between East and
West, There was a genuine exchange, and it was possible be-
cause the men and women concerned had been accustomed
for years to meet in a friendly atmosphere to discuss new in-
GEOPHYSICAL JAMBOREE 39
formation, ideas, and discoveries. The International Geophysi-
cal Year was but a vaster, more comprehensive version of these
regular sessions, conducted in the same atmosphere of scien-
tific enquiry.
As I write, I have just returned from a small meeting in
Paris. My colleagues included a Spanish Jesuit, a Hungarian
Jew who had immigrated to the United States as a boy, a
Japanese professor, an ardent member of the Soviet Com-
munist party, and a scion of an ancient and aristocratic Italian
family of astronomers. All was harmony because, however
different our view on other matters might be, we had a com-
mon bond in science and geophysics hence the simplicity and
ease of scientific meetings as opposed to political or business
ones. This is not due to the sound reason and sweet temper of
the scientists involved, which are no greater and no less than
in any other group of well-educated, sophisticated men and
women, but rather it is due to the nature of the subject dis-
cussed. It is a great deal simpler to work out a plan for chart-
ing the world's oceans than it is to discuss freedom, wealth,
politics, or religion.
CHAPTER 5
ROMANIA
OCTOBER 1957
The Toronto meetings were scarcely over when with a
feeling of rising excitement I left my cluttered office, the lec-
ture rooms, the stacks of unused documents, the bills and
thank-you letters and set out to visit the Communist half of
the world for the first time. I had been invited by the Roma-
nian Government to visit and lecture on geophysics at various
universities and institutes.
The invitation had both surprised and intrigued me, for I
had no connection with Romania and I knew that very few
Westerners went there. But I could see no reason for not ac-
cepting. I was not engaged in secret work; no one could object
to my lecturing on mountain-building, and I might learn a
great deal about the geology and geophysics of eastern Eu-
rope. As a rather conservative, retired colonel, I was not greatly
disturbed by the thought that I might be accused of being a
Communist sympathizer. Romanian scientists had attended
the meetings in Toronto, and if the president of an interna-
tional union could not pay a return visit to discuss geophysics,
Sun-spots as seen through a telescope.
.,' , "I '''." T- : v, * : ' v "
Detail of sun-spots and granulation on the sun's surface as photo-
graphed from a high-altitude balloon.
Mirrors of a coelostat are adjusted to reflect the sun's image into
a solar telescope at the Shternberg Astronomical Institute, Mos-
The five-inch coronagraph and spectrograph at the high-altitude
observatory at Climax, Colorado. Observer at right is inspecting
the solar-flare patrol instrument.
A large solar prominence, 140,000 miles high. The small white
disc indicates the relative size of the earth.
Balloon parachute, and mounted instrument package for high-
altitude solar research are readied for launching in Minnesota.
The fourth of six rockets is fired from U.S.S. Point Defiance dur-
ing the total solar eclipse of October 12, 1958, at the Danger
Islands, Central Pacific Ocean.
The firing of the first successful Vanguard rocket on March 17,
1958. A small test sphere entered into orbit and became the
second U. S.-IGY satellite.
A highly polished twenty-inch Navy Vanguard satellite is in-
stalled in a rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Explorer VII, last and largest of the satellites
in the U. S. IGY program, is inspected be-
fore its launching on October 13, 1959.
Launching of the U. S. Air Force's Lunar
Probe III on November 8, 1958, which
failed to reach the moon when its third
stage did not fire.
The instrument container and part of the
parachute of a Soviet research rocket recov-
ered after carrying 4,840 pounds of experi-
mental equipment to an altitude of 132
miles in May 1957.
Replica of Sputnik III, which was launched on May 15, 1958.
It carried 2,130 pounds of instruments and power-supply source.
The firing of a United States Aerobee rocket at the research
launching site at Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. The antennae
are used to track the rocket. Instruments on different rockets
measure different properties of the upper atmosphere, aurora,
and cosmic rays.
ROMANIA 41
then there is neither much use in having international organi-
zations nor much hope for world understanding.
Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that I left To-
ronto. It was that gay northern season, gayer than southern
springtime, when the maples light the woods like flame a
brilliant presage to the dark, cold poignancy of winter.
The chill and apprehension vanished overnight; I was in
Europe again, caught up in its fascination and busy with the
problems of my journey. They were not trivial. During one
short day in Paris, I twice had to visit the Canadian Embassy,,
the Hungarian and Romanian Consulates, and the Hungarian
Embassy. They seemed to be located in out-of-the-way places.
With the greatest rush and difficulty I got all my visas from
the uncomprehending and secretive officials in their untidy
little offices, and finally I was at the platform to catch the
Arlberg-Orient Express. The Romanians had suggested that I
fly, but perhaps under the influence of spy movies I chose this
famous train. My feeling of triumphant satisfaction as I
climbed onto the sleeper marked Paris-Bucuresti turned to
disappointment when I saw that the corridor was deserted; the
beautiful blonde spy, the two Englishmen discussing cricket,
the German agent, and the other dramatis personae must have
already gone to bed. I did the same.
Next morning the sun glistened on the first autumn snow on
the Alps. The big wet flakes had reached the tracks at the
Arlberg tunnel, but in Austria the snow had turned to rain.
The churches reached up from empty fields to point to heaven
with slim spires or with the stubby thumbs of Byzantine
domes.
As the train rattled out of the defiles and entered the broad
and smiling valleys of Austria, the clouds cleared and the sun
shone on the brown forests and the white peaks above. The
face of Austria was coloured like that of a weather-beaten old
42 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
man, and in the evening as we approached Vienna and the
border I felt the old world dying.
The Vienna station epitomized the West. It was new, bril-
liantly lighted, and gay with people; its kiosks were full of good
things. As the crowd swarmed off the train, I lingered in the
door of my compartment, and an American said to me:
"Aren't you getting off? This is the end of the line!" Unwit-
tingly, he had expressed my worst fears; so I got off to take a
last look at the West and to buy an emergency supply of
chocolate, cheese, and fruit.
When I returned, the modern express had vanished and a
porter told me that I would find my car on another track. It
was in a dark corner at the farthest end of the station, linked
together with one other through-coach and several dishevelled
freight cars into a mean little train of some of the oldest roll-
ing stock in Europe. The porter said that the cars came back
from the east stripped and filthy but that he, fortunately,
would be leaving it at the border.
More ominous even than the train were the people on the
platform. Several thick, squat men in long leather trench coats
and caps stood and stared at each passenger in turn. Several
policemen, and an Austrian soldier in a dark green uniform
and a Tyrolean hat, stood watching them, silent and armed.
The half-dozen other passengers slipped down the platform,
climbed on board, and locked themselves in their compart-
ments. So did I.
I did not go to bed, but waited to see the border. It took us a
long time to reach it, and even longer to get across. There were
long waits and much shouting. Outside were flood-lights and
soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets. Two sets of officials
came to my compartment. One talked for a while, but seeing
that I could not understand him, repeated, "Geld?" several
times. I said, "Nein!" and he went away. Another scrutinized
my passport and took it. The train picked up speed and ran
ROMANIA 43
steadily on. It had crossed the border and there was nothing to
see outside and nothing to do inside except go to bed.
When I wakened, the train had stopped. I roused myself to
look out and saw that we were in a big station. It was Buda-
pest. I quickly got dressed and left my compartment intending
to explore. I poked my head out of the window, but the view
was not encouraging. The station was nearly empty, and ex-
cept for several policemen and two or three groups of security
guards, the few people looked incredibly poor and dejected.
The special police, dressed in peaked caps and long overcoats
of light blue cloth, were impressive in their armament: a re-
volver, a three-foot night-stick hanging from a wide black belt,
and a Sten gun carried at the ready. An old woman with a
pinched face tried to sell thin newspapers printed in Hun-
garian, and four youths, balanced on little ladders, scrubbed
the car windows as though their lives depended on it. No doubt
they were glad to have any kind of job, but their vigorous ef-
forts had little effect. They had no water!
Soon the train pulled out. The city, as we passed through
it, appeared to be completely dead. There was no traffic, few
people moved, no smoke came from the factory chimneys. On
the outskirts we passed a low hill, its sides marked by zig-zag
trenches. On the top, a solitary tank with a big gun manoeu-
vred slowly and aimlessly about. No one was in sight. If the
city was a lifeless head, the country resembled the corpse.
I suppose that any countryside is generally empty of peo-
ple, but that day, a year after the revolt, the Hungarian plain
seemed to me oppressively, ominously deserted and still. In
general appearance it was much like the Po River valley in
Italy, but it lacked any gaiety whatsoever. No children played.
No one waved at the train. Scarcely a wagon ever passed on
the dirt roads. There were no tractors in the fields, no cars in
the towns, and few people on the village streets. I had never
been in Hungary before so I could make no comparisons,
44 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
but the impression I got was of a land poverty-stricken and
apathetic to a degree I had never seen elsewhere and did not
want ever to see again.
Although I had been warned that there would be no diner,
and was fully prepared to breakfast on chocolate and cheese,
I ventured down through the train in search of one. It was
there, an old car, empty save for two wistfully cheerful Hun-
garian waiters in faded blue uniforms threadbare and ragged
at the cuffs. After some difficulty with language I got them to
bring me an egg and a roll and some poor plum jam. I asked
for coffee but they brought tea, a miserable approximation
to the genuine article which seemed to be an infusion of local
herbs doctored with lemon and sugar. They charged me at
least ten times too much for this simple meal. When I pointed
out that they had put the decimal point in the wrong place
in calculating the conversion, they were not abashed as they
made the correction, but smiled so sadly that I tipped them
twice too much into the bargain.
At lunch I was again their sole support except for a Ger-
man, who had a bottle of beer. The one main course was an
incredibly bad stew or goulash, mostly of potatoes, with a
little tomato and a few pieces of very tough meat of some un-
identifiable animal. The only dessert was chocolate biscuits
wrapped in tinfoil, which I was soon to recognize as the high-
est luxury available in eastern Europe.
Late in the afternoon we came to the Romanian border,
which was just as complicated to cross as that separating
eastern and western Europe. Between the two border stations
there was much shunting and stopping, and the engine, the
diner, and all the crew, including the porter, were changed.
Soldiers with fixed bayonets or tommy guns stood about, and
the whole train was thoroughly searched.
Just as we reached the foothills of the Carpathians, it got
dark. The train puffed up dark valleys, between mountains
ROMANIA 45
that I could scarcely see. I was too discouraged even to look
to see if there was a Romanian diner on the train. In any case
I did not want to waste the food I had bought, so I sat sadly
in my compartment and ate it.
Next morning I awoke as we approached Bucharest. I was
beginning to think that the countryside and railways of one
European plain look much like those of another, when I was
surprised to notice a large army camp full of soldiers. A little
farther along, a train-load of artillery under canvas was partly
hidden behind some cars on a siding.
We entered the city and stopped at a station which was
noticeably more active and in better trim than those in Hun-
gary. A dozen Romanian scientists and officials were waiting
on the platform to greet me. I was warmly welcomed by Dr.
A. Demetrescu, the courtly senior astronomer and geophysicist
of Romania, and his colleagues: Drs. Constantinescu, Popo-
vici, Sabba Stanescu, and two interpreters; Domnisoara
(Miss) Carin Pavelescu; and Mr. Pamfil Diplan. Drs. Deme-
trescu and Constantinescu had been the Romanian representa-
tives to the meetings in Toronto, but the other members of
the welcoming committee I had not met before. The four
doctors comprised the Romanian National Committee on
Geodesy and Geophysics.
Russian Pobeda taxis took us all to the Athen6e Palace
Hotel on one side of the main square in front of the former
Royal Palace. My room was large, clean, and comfortable, and
it was well looked after by diligent German-speaking Schwa-
bian maids. After some breakfast, the two interpreters pro-
posed a short walk through the centre of the town.
Bucharest was much larger and more attractive than I had
expected. It is a city of a million people and its handsome ave-
nues, parks, and buildings justify its nickname of the "Paris
of eastern Europe." But the automobiles for which the fine
roads were built had vanished. There were very few vehicles
46 I G Y : The Year of the New Moons
but a great number of people walking, among them many
Russian soldiers.
We walked on, crossed a market, and climbed a hill to the
National Assembly building and the Patriarchie, the princi-
pal cathedral of the Romanian Greek Orthodox Church. It
was open but not very crowded. I gathered that churches
were allowed to remain open if they at least half-heartedly
followed the party line, because in this way propaganda could
be brought effectively to those who would not otherwise listen.
This church was, of course, a show-place, and I was not sur-
prised to find a priest and a few old women praying and light-
ing candles which would demonstrate to groups of visitors
that there was religious freedom.
My guides next took me to the headquarters of the Office
for Cultural and Scientific Relations with Foreign Countries.
It was in a fine old mansion that no doubt formerly belonged
to some wealthy family. The senior official who received me
had a dry, hard manner, and the hollowness of his pleasantries
were greatly heightened by his extraordinary glasses. They
were large and the outside surface was mirrored. Presumably
he could see me, but I could only see two great gold discs in
a blank face as expressionless as that of a bullfrog. Over Turk-
ish coffee and Tuica (plum brandy) we discussed my tour.
I had long ago decided that the only sensible behaviour for
a guest in a Communist country was to be polite and reason-
ably agreeable. Rudeness would show the West in a poor light
and keep me from seeing the scientific work I wanted to see.
I had no intention of compromising myself or of pretending
that I favoured Communism in the least, but I surmised
that they wished to impress me with their scientific work and
that, knowing I was not in sympathy with their politics, they
would not raise matters which would be embarrassing. My
host, for such I suppose he might be called, said nothing to
which I had to take exception, and our conversation, like
ROMANIA 47
a bat, flittered aimlessly back and forth, chased by the
interpreters.
We returned to the hotel and at 3 p.m. were served a lengthy
lunch in the marble and plush main dining-room of what
had once been a fine hotel. Unlike the upstairs, which was
still efficiently run, the dining-rooms and meals were atrocious.
Service took a very long time, and weiners, sauerkraut, and
corn porridge did not seem suitable fare for such ornate sur-
roundings.
After lunch I dutifully followed my guides through two art
galleries, one of them a former royal palace. King Carol's
royal cipher was still discernible in the plaster mouldings in
some of the rooms. There were two magnificent El Greco's
and a group of older paintings vaguely labelled Flemish school
or XVII-century Italian, but the place of honour was given to
a large display of the works of two Romanians, Grigorescu
and Luchian, the latter a rather unimpressive Impressionist,
the former an enthusiast for peasants, gypsies, and very large
oxen. I noticed with some pleasure that the paintings were
titled in English. This, I assumed, perhaps falsely, was for
the enlightenment of the large delegations from the underde-
veloped countries which travel through all Iron Curtain coun-
tries and for whom English is the lingua franca.
At eight o'clock, without pausing to dine, we went, in pur-
suit of more culture, to the main concert hall to hear the Sec-
ond State Orchestra (the First was touring Jugoslavia) and a
large chorus in Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust." We returned
to the hotel, at 11:30 p.m. and, like the other guests, settled
down to the main meal of the day. These extraordinary eating
hours were the norm in Romania and quickly produced a feel-
ing of dyspepsia and lethargy. As far as I could judge, the re-
gime had exaggerated the normally late hours of southern Eu-
rope for the deliberate purpose of stupefying the people. Noth-
ing saps the energy faster than to work from seven to three
48 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
without a break, to have an excessively late lunch, and to go
to bed after midnight full of a large and soggy meal.
The next day work started, and on that and succeeding days
I was taken to the laboratories and offices of the Bucharest
Observatory, the University of Bucharest, the School of Mines,
the Geological Survey, and a newly organized school for
petroleum technology. Most of the senior staff and the older
technicians had held the same positions under King Carol,
under Prince Michael, during the German occupation, and
through the shifting regimes of the Russian Communist domi-
nation. Some of them probably remember Queen Marie. They
were all the scientists the country had and they were indispen-
sable. In the Communist countries I repeatedly noticed that
scientists are the most durable of officials. This is not because
they are turncoats, but because their work is non-political.
They were all enthusiastic Romanians and that sufficed. Their
Communist masters, needing scientists and having none to
spare, avoided asking questions that might be too embar-
rassing. So did I. It was enough for me to see the skill and
loving care with which they tended their ancient telescopes
("This one is the largest in eastern Europe outside of Russia;
that one was newly installed for the IGY solar program"),
their pride in the books and maps of their country which
they had published, and the devotion of the favoured graduate
students allowed to work in the faded laboratories of an an-
cient professor.
It was not a bright new world. Theirs was a hard struggle
amid desperate poverty upon which they put the bravest faces.
Only by a chance remark did I gain an inkling of what it must
be like to be the intellectuals of a proud people oppressed
for seventeen years by an occupying army. One student said
to me: "I have spent four years learning Russian, but only so
that I can read translations of American text-books since we
cannot get the English originals/' Another professor in a
ROMANIA
49
threadbare suit questioned me about salaries in Canada and
the West. "No/ 7 he said, "not in dollars, but in something I
can understand how many pounds of beefsteak will your
salary buy?" When I had answered him, he turned to his
colleagues who hushed him ("The walls have ears") and
bitterly said: "You see, they lied."
For the most part we avoided such discussions, which were
useless under the circumstances and embarrassing to every-
one, and turned our attention to the astronomical and geo-
physical instruments, the geomagnetic and gravity maps, and
the charts showing the location of the major earthquakes of
the area. They showed me rock specimens, and I was able to
assure them of resemblances, about which they had conjec-
tured from available writings, between some of their peculiar
rocks, asbestos and nepheline syenite in particular, and Cana-
dian counterparts.
On another day I was taken to see the Government print-
ing bureau. It was a vast affair in the best wedding-cake style
of new Moscow twelve stories high in the centre and
covering seven acres. It had taken six years to build. Since I
saw no other new building in Romania, except the cabinet
offices facing a park in which still stood a large statue of Stalin,
I concluded that its erection must have occupied most of
the building industry of the country during that time.
Inside the front door was a large hall decorated with marble
panels and carved doors and furnished with plush side chairs.
Opening out of it was a concert auditorium. Both were said to
be for the benefit of the workers, but since the auditorium
had no seats in it and the hall was reserved for one dance a
year, their use seemed limited. I was told that great emphasis
was placed on the welfare of the workers, but the same official
also admitted that the only parts of the building that had not
yet been completed were the workers* club and workers' can-
teen, although a temporary canteen for two thousand was said
50 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
to be functioning. Perhaps these amenities were not necessary
in view of the eight hours of uninterrupted work which was
the normal shift. The dishevelled and dispirited workers con-
trasted strongly with their palatial surroundings. The table
setting might be fine, but they would have to wait for the jam
until tomorrow.
In any case, the output appeared to be prodigious. The
quality did not seem high, but there was immense activity.
I was told that each day this vast plant produced 100,000
books, 50,000 magazines, and 50,000 pamphlets, as well as
5 daily and 15 weekly newspapers, the newspapers having a
combined circulation of 2,500,000. Some people have ex-
pressed amazement at these figures. Although I cannot vouch
for their accuracy, I think it possible that they are correct.
The Communists are great propagandists; this plant was said
to do 80 per cent of all the printing in Romania, so that even
this output would provide only one or two books a person a
year. Most of the books were school texts or Communist
works, and all were cheaply printed and bound on automatic
machinery in very large editions.
I had been invited to Romania to give four lectures on
geophysics, and these provided my greatest surprise. The first
lecture was to be given at the university in the evening. As
we approached the hall, we saw that the corridor was full of
people trying to get in. The hall was packed with people, who
stood up and clapped as we made our way to the front and
again applauded tumultuously when I had been introduced.
Although I am a fairly experienced speaker, I had never known
anything like it I was astounded. My visit had not been tan-
gibly publicized, and few of them could have heard of me
anyway; and my topic, mountain-building, could not possibly
generate such enthusiasm. I realized that these people were
spontaneously expressing their pleasure at one of their rare
contacts with the untrammelled West. I spoke with sentence-
ROMANIA 51
by-sentence interpretation for nearly an hour and a half, and
received the same enthusiastic ovation when I had finished. It
was very moving.
My visits and lectures in the capital concluded, I set out on
field trips to see the geology. I had asked to see the Iron Gates
where the Danube cuts through the Carpathian Mountains,
and my hosts suggested a drive to Sinaia, Bra|ov-Stalin, and
Cluj in Transylvania. In spite of the fact that the British Em-
bassy had told me that the border was closed and that no one
had been allowed near the Iron Gates for years, I was taken
there by the very capable geologist who had mapped the re-
gion before the war. We spent two pleasant days driving and
walking amid the grand scenery and fascinating geology of this
classic region. We stayed in the spa on the site of Roman
baths at Baile Herculane, and examined the ruins of the Ro-
man fort and bridge across the Danube at Turnu-Severin. A
Roman road 7 cut like a ledge alongside the river, passes through
the most precipitous canyons on the Jugoslav side. From across
the river one can see a great Roman inscription and make out
the emperor's name, Trajanus. The Romanians made no bones
about their pride in their Latin origin, which they claimed
to date from the invasion by Trajan in A.D. 101-105. As they
pointed out, the name of their country means "Roman," and
they resent the efforts to make them forget it by changing the
spelling on new coins to Rominia or Ruminia. Inasmuch as
they have fought (and often been defeated by) Slavs and
Turks for eighteen hundred years, and still retain a lan-
guage which closely resembles Latin, it is probable that Ro-
manians will continue to distrust the Russians and furtively
hold their own views.
At the head of the rapids on the Danube we joined a party
of Jugoslav and Romanian engineers and cruised in a river
steamer back through the chasms by which the Danube
crosses the Carpathians. It was a beautiful trip, and one that
52 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
few Westerners have made for at least seventeen years. Cau-
tiously at first, but more affably as the beer circulated, the
engineers discussed the building of a Danube system to match
the St. Lawrence sea-way. The plan is a century old but has
always been held up for political reasons.
Many powerful tugs and barges of great size snorted up the
river, flying the flags of all the Communist countries. Some
were oil tankers, and one was a new Hungarian pleasure ship
that I supposed was being exported to Russia across the Black
Sea.
On the other trip three geologists and an interpreter drove
me past Ploe^ti, only now recovering from war-time bomb-
ing, to Sinaia, the mountain resort of kings and princes. The
white cliffs of the mountains were glorious in the sun, their
sides bright with golden beech trees and their peaks topped
with dark green firs. We stopped often to examine the rocks.
After crossing the old border into Austria-Hungary at Predeal
in the mountains, we dined in Brasov-Stalin (the first is the
old name, the other is the new official name, for in keeping
with the rather grim situation in Romania, Stalin is still offi-
cially respected) . Then we took the train to Cluj.
In the capital of Transylvania there are two universities and
nearby an observatory where scientists were working on a pro-
gram for the IGY. I was told that I was the first Western scien-
tist to have visited the observatory in the past seventeen
years, but that two Russians had been there. With the aid
of interpreters I delivered two technical lectures on mountain-
building, to the same wild acclaim as in Bucharest, but I was
now used to the idea that it was my scarcity value, not my
oratory, that aroused these displays.
It would be gratifying to think that the October of 1957
would forever be associated in the minds of the Romanian
geophysicists with my paper on orogenesis, but it is certain
that it will not. It will be remembered as the month of the
ROMANIA
53
launching of the first Russian Sputnik. It caused a tremendous
to-do. Newspapers, radio, and loud-speakers carried no other
news. The whole powerful propaganda machine spouted glory
to the Soviets and the Communist party. Newspaper men de-
scended upon me in droves demanding a statement. I consid-
ered my position rather carefully. Had I been in Toronto I
should in all honesty have praised the great achievement
loudly, but in Bucharest to do so seemed to me to smack of
being a "fellow-traveller." I therefore said only that it was "in-
teresting and what had been expected/' Pressed, I said: "Every-
thing has gone according to plan." This last secretly delighted
some of the Romanians, who get a little tired of five-year plans,
increased production programs, and other Communist plans
of which they hear so much. Pressed further, I pointed out
that really I knew nothing about the Sputnik, for I could
neither read nor understand Romanian and in all the excite-
ment everyone had forgotten to explain. This was just as
we were about to begin lunch. Before the meal was over, the
reporters were back with reams of teletyped news from
abroad in French and English. They demanded that I read
them and comment. I read, but I still said: "The Sputnik is
interesting!"
Only after fourteen attempts was I left alone. So far as I
know, two lines in one paper were all that was devoted to my
entire visit to Romania.
CHAPTER 6
THE NEW MOONS
The Sputnik placed in orbit while I was in Romania was the
first of two dozen artificial satellites successfully launched by
the end of 1959. Many people have seen them hurtling across
the sky at twilight, but not everyone has realized that the
plan to make them and to exchange the information which
they gathered was part of the International Geophysical Year. 1
Many scientists had talked about the idea, and a proposal
made in 1953 by S. P. Singer of the United States at a con-
ference at the University of Oxford led to detailed planning.
On July 29, 1955, President Eisenhower announced that the
United States Navy had been assigned the task of launching
Vanguard satellites as part of the IGY program, and soon
afterwards the Soviet Union said that they would do the same.
No other nation has yet joined them.
Looking back, one wonders to what extent American sci-
entists felt that through satellites they could open paths by
which to investigate nearby space, and to what extent they
ir The IGY agreements guaranteed the free exchange of scientific
observations, including those obtained by artificial satellites. But there
was never any plan to exchange information about the prime requisite
for putting satellites into orbit: powerful and accurate rocket motors.
THENEWMOONS 55
wished to jolt their military leaders into taking rocket develop-
ment as seriously as the Soviets were known to be doing. Cer-
tainly great credit is due to the Soviets for the achievements
which enabled them to launch the first satellites, and led the
world to revise its estimate of Russian technical ability.
In scientific results the Americans and the Soviets are closely
matched. The advantage of the better launching vehicles and
larger satellites of the Soviets has been compensated for by
the greater number of satellites launched by the Americans,
their superior instrumentation, and their more efficient meth-
ods of tracking and of recovering data. By skillful design and
use of miniature electronic components, the Americans have
packed as many instruments into their smaller satellites as
have the Soviets into their larger ones. Up to the end of 1959
the Americans attempted six times as many launchings as
the Russians. Although half of them failed, the Americans
still were successful in sixteen cases, against six successful Rus-
sian attempts. The diversity of orbits thus attained gave the
Americans a wider sampling of space from which to draw
conclusions. It was because of this that they were the first
to recognize the Van Allen belts of intense radiation around
the earth. This discovery is perhaps the most surprising yet
made by artificial satellites, though the Russian photographs
of the far side of the moon are the most sensational.
By April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut,
circled the earth, the Russians had launched fourteen arti-
ficial planets and satellites, of which four still remained aloft.
The Americans had successfully fired thirty-nine objects into
space, of which no less than twenty-four were still in orbit
around the earth or the sun.
To me, the most exciting fact about the satellite program
is that the tremendous initial problems of starting the explora-
tion of space were no more complex or diversified than the
problems that continued to present themselves as the projects
56 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
developed. Scientists were faced by results so surprising and so
unexpected that they had to cope with each problem as it pre-
sented itself, adapting their instruments and their techniques
to the unsuspected intricacies of space.
All satellites have been launched by rockets propelled by
the same force that causes recoil in guns. A rocket may be
thought of as a gun which uses the firing of its ammunition
to propel itself; the gases spouting from its rear are its am-
munition. To make the recoil powerful, thereby causing the
rocket to travel far and fast, the weight of the ammunition
or fuel must be large in relation to the rocket, and the fuel
must be ejected with the maximum heat and speed.
Rockets all have the same ancestry. First invented by the
Chinese as fireworks, military rockets up to 24 pounds in
weight were used by European armies as artillery early in the
nineteenth century. Intensive Russian experimentation be-
gan with the work of Nescherskii and Tsiolkovskii near the
end of the nineteenth century. Early in this century Robert
Goddard, an American, greatly improved the design and effi-
ciency of small rockets. In the 1920*5 Hermann Oberth worked
out the theory of rocket flight in greater detail, and during
World War II his ideas were used by the Germans to produce
the first large rocket the V2 capable of carrying a ton about
200 miles horizontally, or 100 miles straight up. During the
fading days of the war both Americans and Russians captured
scientists who had been employed on this program and con-
tinued to utilize them and their ideas. Probably all the rockets
used to launch satellites during the IGY were developments
oftheV2.
The principles of launching satellites can be briefly ex-
plained. As everyone knows, a ball tossed into the air falls
again at the same place or nearby, according to the direction
in which it is thrown. This is what simple rockets do. During
the IGY many were fired to carry instruments up 100 or 200
THENEWMOONS 57
miles. If, however, the ball is attached to a string and vigor-
ously twirled, it does not fall but goes round and round on
the end of the string. To start with, it must be given a rotary
motion, which must exceed a minimum speed if the string
is to be kept taut. A satellite revolves about the earth in ex-
actly this fashion, for the attraction due to gravity takes the
place of the string. To place a satellite in orbit, a rocket must
first propel it above the atmosphere and at the same time im-
part to it a large and precise speed in a horizontal direction
so that it neither falls back to earth nor flies away into space.
The spent rocket-cases, of which there may be several for a
single satellite, either fall to earth or go into orbit themselves.
Friction of the air quickly slows a revolving ball unless it is
continually propelled, but if a satellite is placed in orbit
above the atmosphere during its initial firing, it will coast
around the earth on the end of its gravity-string for a long
time. In outer space, because there is little air to slow the satel-
lite down, it has no need of a motor, but if it fails to get above
the atmosphere, or if it gradually loses speed and re-enters the
air, it will be quickly slowed and fall to earth.
To place a satellite 100 miles above the earth and accelerate
it to the required speed of about 18,000 miles an hour hori-
zontally requires immense effort. The only engines which have
so far been successful are rocket engines blowing themselves
along by a blast of white hot gases emitted at tremendous
speed and pressure from the rear. They resemble airplane jet
engines, except that in outer space they cannot get air with
which to burn their fuel and therefore have to carry with them
liquid oxygen and kerosene. Sometimes other combinations,
such as benzene and nitric acid, or secret mixtures are used.
Once the fuel is consumed, the large empty fuel tank and
the engine become useless encumbrances and are jettisoned.
Another rocket with a smaller engine and less fuel takes over.
As many as four of these stages may be fired, each one attached
58 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
to the nose of its predecessor. The later stages are often little
more than giant sky-rockets, hollow tubes filled with some
relatively slow-burning explosive* In the nose of the last stage
of all is the capsule carrying instruments. In some instances
the capsule is ejected to orbit by itself; in others the last rocket-
case retains the payload and is, itself, the satellite. Because
of these two different techniques, it is difficult to compare
the weights of satellites, but in all instances the weight of the
capsule containing the instruments is a very small fraction,
sometimes only a thousandth part, of the weight of the whole
rocket at launching.
Astronomers, who felt a responsibility for keeping track of
the new moons, suggested a numbering scheme similar to
that used for comets. It was proposed that each satellite be
given a name consisting of the year followed by one of the
letters of the Greek alphabet. Thus the first three satellites
were called 19570, 1957(3, and 19583. Of course the satellites
were also known by their popular names: Sputnik I, Sputnik
II, and Explorer I.
In some cases satellites and protective covers are ejected
from the last rocket stage by springs, so that a flock of as
many as five pieces may spread out surprisingly quickly. These
parts are numbered in order of brightness; for example,
1957 a i and 1957 a 2 -
The design of the rocket vehicles and their satellites is ex-
tremely intricate, for some have over 100,000 parts. The con-
trols of many early vehicles were built to function automati-
cally, but the Explorer and Discoverer series responded to some
instructions sent from the ground, and the Soviets are be-
lieved to have been able to correct the course of their Luniks.
If everything works properly and the launching is successfully
completed, the small satellite must be followed visually or
by radio and interrogated.
In order to track the more important pieces and obtain in-
THE NEW MOONS 59
formation from them, complex and widespread systems had to
be established. Of these, undoubtedly the most extensive is
the American Moonwatch, a system of amateur astronomer
teams operating at about one hundred twenty stations in the
United States and another one hundred twenty throughout the
rest of the world. At each station, teams watch a segment of
the meridian in the sky for the passage of satellites across it.
Since many are too faint to be visible with the naked eye,
small telescopes are used. Several, pointed at different angles,
are required to cover the zone. Because satellites are only visi-
ble at twilight, when the earth and the sky are dark and the
satellites are lit by the sun, watch need only be kept in the
morning and evening. The time and the direction of each
passage are carefully recorded, and the information sent to the
Astronomical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is charged with optical
tracking. This observatory also directs the twelve Baker-Nunn
camera stations throughout the world, at which huge cameras,
especially designed for the difficult task of photographing
these faint, fast-moving objects, fix the satellites precisely in
time and space.
Besides these optical methods, the Vanguard Computing
Centre in Washington is responsible for two other systems
which gather information from satellites that are transmit-
ting. The Minitrack stations, of which during the IGY there
were four along the Pacific coast of South America and others
in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia,
locate the position and height of satellites by radio. More are
under construction. Another world-wide series of stations
known as Microlock interrogate satellites to obtain the infor-
mation they have recorded. From all these observations the
orbits of satellites are computed and predictions made for fu-
ture sightings.
The Americans have also recently announced a new scheme,
60 IGY : The Year of the New Moons
Tepee, which can record the blast of gases emitted by large
rockets. Since the radio waves on which this listening system
depends are reflected around the earth, it may be able even
to detect launchings on the opposite side of the globe.
Within Russia the Soviets have both optical and radio track-
ing systems, and the results of their observations on Rus-
sian satellites are published regularly in the Bulletin of the In-
stitute of Theoretical Astronomy. Russian predictions of the
time of passage of their satellites over foreign observatories
are available to those interested. Thus, predictions were re-
ceived throughout 1959 at the University of Toronto observa-
tory. The distinguished astronomer Mrs. Alia Masevich is in
charge of the program and has described it at a meeting of
the American Astronomical Society.
Finally, several very large radio telescopes with movable
dish-shaped antennae were modified to locate satellites either
by radio or by radar devices. The largest of these yet built has
a dish 250 feet across and is at Jodrell Bank near Manchester,
England.
The recitation of such extensive preparations suggests
that tracking should be complete, but this is by no means
so, for the problems are immense. In the early days the systems
did not work well. The batteries on Sputnik II failed less than
a week after it was launched, perhaps due to overheating by
sunlight. Because of the distance between ground stations and
the lack of experience of the operators, only 3 per cent of the
information broadcast by Explorer I in its first month of life
was recovered. In contrast, after tape-recorders had been in-
stalled to act as memories for satellites, 80 per cent of the
data from the later broadcasts of Explorer III was recovered.
Again, all traces of the rocket-case of Vanguard I were lost
from March 17, 1958, to May 6, 1959. It had been thought
that the rocket-case would have less velocity than the satellite,
THENEWMOONS 6l
which it pushed ahead with springs, but apparently the case
was still firing gently when the satellite was detached and the
case had the greater speed. As a result, the trackers looked
for the case at the wrong times.
Many people ask: Is there an exchange of data? Do the Rus-
sians really tell us what they discover? The answer in most
cases is emphatically yes. It is true that there have been cases
of delay and obscurity on both sides, but these exceptions
are far fewer than people believe. The remarkable thing is
not that there is an exchange, but that anyone, in view of the
difficulties involved, recovers any data worth exchanging. The
problems of keeping track of several objects, at most only a
few feet in dimension, which are hurtling through outer space
at speeds in excess of 18,000 miles an hour and at heights
greater than 100 miles are so complex that it is remarkable
how much information has been gathered. The undertaking
is further complicated because of the unexpected conditions
encountered in space. Experiments designed to measure
