Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-10-11
WHAT HANSEN DID FIND.
The North Pole Was s little Too Faa
 Away for Hiln.

Away for Hiln.
 Although Dr. Nansen lacked almost exactly 400 miles of reaching the place which the geographers speak of as 'the northern pivotal spot of our planet" the investigations he made are said to be of the greatest scientific value.
 Among other things the aurora, the "rosy -hued phantom of the northern skies" was made the subject of particu- lar inquiry by corps of trained meteor ologists who accompanied the expedi- ton for that especial purpose.
 For more than quarter of century we have boasted of living in an age of widespread intelligence and general en- lightenment; but if there is or has been any subject in the whole range of science upon which we have been very vaguely and unsatisfaetorily informed, 1t has been on that of the aurora borealis.
 So-called scientific writers have gone so far as to refer to the wonderful golden glow that occasionally lights the northern skies as being caused by the sun shining on the icebergs!" Many other attempted explanations, some of them equally ridiculous, were made by the speculative investigators before some enc finally hit on the idea that cleo tricity was in some way responsible for that most marvellous and impl essive spectacle.
 The electrical character of the aurora borealis was suspected many years ago by the more advanced students of the ,a,,ar, ,1r(.uap 11YfiJ short time before Nansen's departure for the far north. In some of their eX- periments Profs Lemstrom and Branais were using the spectroscope, when it oc- cured to them that they might, with d little patience, analyze the aurora's light. This unique experiment. clearly established the fact that auroras are simply electrical discharges among the fine particles of meteoric iron dust which appear to be especially plentiful in the atmosphere in the region of the poles.
 With the Lemstrom-Branais expert ment as a basis for future operations along the line of auroral investigation, the Nansen meteorologists fitted them selves out with the most complicated set of instruments ever manufactured. Among the rest they took along with them several miles of copper and steel wire. the avowed purpose being to make artificial auroras and investigate them at leisure.
 In carrying out the details of manu- featuring an aurora borealis the expert mentors first coiled a mile or more of copper wire around conical granite peak that was only few hundred feet in height. This wire they pointed every few yards with steel "nibs," each three inches in length. When these details had been satisfactorily completed a strong current of electricity was dis charged into the wire, whereupon brilliant, crown-shaped aurora almost instantly appeared and hung like halo, apparently only few yards above the point Of the granite peak.
 In later experiments peaks situated on the opposite sides of deep valley were used. In this instance, when the electric discharge into the wire was full and complete, an arched aurora with all the accompaniments of ''streamers' and changing coIors hung like great, feecy rainbow over the valley. Information on this most important subject is unnecessarily very meager; how ever, when the different reports have been officially made to the various Scan- dinavian scientific bodies which aided the Nansen enterprise, we expect to be able to give some more Interesting points on the subject of manufactured auroras. St. Louis Republic.