Cook Islands Have Storm

Warnings From The

Ionosphere

From Our Mangaia Correspondent WHILE in Rarotonga early this year, the writer, as a country cousin, was shown one of the most in teresting institutions in the administra tive centre—the ionosphere Station behind the little town of Avarua.

Here, a tall radio-like steel mast points into the sky; inside the station a high frequency apparatus, resembling the com bination of an X-ray tube and a trans mitting set, sends waves into the upper atmosphere, as high as five kilometres, which enter the rarefied region aloft, and return, to be registered upon a fluorescent screen as green streaks of light. This, to the initiated, supplies valuable informa tion about the state of the electrically charged layers above. From a chain of such stations, vitally important data could be gained, for the electrical condi tion of the upper air has much to do with the tropical storms that occasionally lay waste a Pacific island.

According to Dr. Irwin, of the CI Hospital, who was my cicerone, a chain of ionosphere stations is planned for the whole Cook archipelago in the near future, and this island of Mangaia, which at present has only radio, will be one of the links. These installations will be a great expense to the NZ government to erect and maintain, together with resi dent operators of special training, but the atmosphere data gained will repay the cost with interest.

It will be intriguing to see what effect this as yet unknown branch of electrical science has upon the superstitious islanders; they understand vaguely how Morse messages are transmitted, and re cognise the commercial radio as a useful amenity. But a transmitter that merely sends rays into the sky will, as likely as not, be blamed for a bad storm!

Dr. L. I. Grange of the NZ Department of Scientific and Industrial Research visited Fiji in July in connection with a soil survey of the Colony.