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Full text of "I G Y The Year Of The New Moons"

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 



I 



^v 

S- 

^ 





(O 
O 
 , 
P- 

n 



a 



S 



I 



s 

4-J 

5 



s 



0) 



CxO 



I 

I 

S 







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 

x 



% o 

cu 



DC 

-s iS 

a b M 



^ I P 



\J 

8 -a 



J 



O 

c 



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