The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-08-28
WRIST FROM AIR
 SECRET OF STORM
WEATHER MAN EXPLORING DISTURB.
 ED ATMOSPHERE.
Find Dust Motes, Too. Meteorologfsts are Interested In sDeeks without which
 There Would be
 No Light,

washington Special to Chicago Tribune The weather man is working industrious iy nowadays to make himself infallible Not I only is he studying meteorological condl.
 tions close to the earth but he has started an investigation of the air at an altitude of ten miles In addition. he is seeking to | discover Q secret which nature has thus far zealously guarded--the mechanics of l storms.
 This work Is not confined to the United ! States, though the great area of this coun- | try enables general deductions of the high est importance to mankind. but 1t occu- | pies the attention of meteorological experts | In Europe and the far east The first step now has been taken to insure cooperation
 betwene these experts SO that there may | be obtained accurate information Of the strata of air that blows over the lowlands and sweeps around the high mountains and I the layers of atmosphere. equally important \ to eur comfort, which dwindle out into eth- | CT.
 The result will be greater accuracy in fu- f ture weather forecasting which in itself will be no mean boon to humanity, and perhaps eventually certain control of | storms. 4nzl4 Make Tests Ten Miles In Air. The Smithsonian Institution has just
 made an additional grant to Dr.A Law renee Rotch. director of the Blue Hill Me- | teoroiogical observatory. just outside of | Boston. for continuance of his work in coi-
 iecting records of temperature. pressure and | air currents ten miles above the earth. Dr. Rotch has flown kites as high 15OOo feet | with instruments attached. but through the | use of ruhber balloons of various sizes to l which are attached small parachutes. with I baskets carrying self-recordng instruments | it has been possible to get records at much l greater heights
 | Experience has shown that as the balloon l ascends and atmospheric pressure lessens
 the bag expands until. reaching the limit of | its tension. the rubber breaks and releases the parachute with It's burden. This floats | gradually to the ground to be picked up and returned for a nominal reward. May Solve Mystery Of Storms. Prof Willis l.. Moore. cliief of the wealth CT bureau. who has been making similar experiments at Mount Weather Research
 observatory in the Aileghany mountains. has
 found that at an altitude of 5000 feet above
 Mount Weather 1t Is just as warm at mid night as it is at midday In July in the hot test weather It Is the intention of Prof. Moore to scatter observation balloons made of rubber and paper throughout the west
 then to pick out a given storm or given cold wave and explore 1t. Prof Moore thus
 describes his proposed experiment.
 we will say there is a storm extending
 from the Mississippi river to Denver and from Duluth to northern Texas. By tele-
 graphic orders I will direct three of the stations in each quadrant of the storm to Iiberate a balloon. say at o'clock. They
 will shoot right up through that storm and the instruments carried in the parachute
 will record pressure. temperature. and hu- midity When the balloons get up to an al- titude of ten miles they will explode We can explode them at ten or even fifteen
 miles.
 'Then the instruments will descend slow Iy to the earth with the records. They will be sent to Mount Weather. where. for the first time. we will be able to study the mechanics of the storm itself. l;o other government in the world could plan a sys- tenn like that. because they have not sta- tions under ons central authority and. with the exception of Russia, have not suf- eicient territory"
 Effect of Dust Notes fin Ar.
 The Mount Weather station promises to provide meteoroloEical data of highest i'm portance. It is intended there to measure the absorption of the. earth's atmosphere to find out exactly the quantity of solar en- ergy that reaches the earth and the quanti- ty that is absorbed by the air.
 The air is full of dust and 1t is intended to count the number of dust notes. As many as s0.000. 900 of these notes have been counted in cubic centimeter-about one-third of an inch. Tn theaters. hospitals. etc. there are about 5000. 900 notes in the same space. These dust atoms are nearly all vegetable and are separate and distinct from germs but Prof Moore asserts that germs attach themselves to dust notes.
 we have learned one important func- tion," he continued. ''It is this. if you were to eliminate dust notes from @ room-if there were no dust in the air there-every person in it would be like star stuck in a black Armament. On perfectly moonless night if you look at the stars they are like bright. glittering objects stuck into a black background
 No Light Without Notes.
 ''If there were no dust notes in the room | each person woud be visible. but the inter | val between would be inky black. You would see walls, but the space between the walls | would be inky black. You could not flu mInate the room without dust notes.
 'The notes refract light. They take up light and scatter and diffuse 1t. and thus illuminate the whole space. You say. What | has that to do with meteorology?" We have gone further and we find that without this | same atom you could not produce rain. The presence of dust notes in the atmosphere | Is such that probably every little minute | droplet has a little atom for a nucleus. You could not get a fog without dust notes at the center of each little minute droplet.
 we want to study. In the physical labo- ratory and count up these notes We want to take samples from here. from the Faral- lones, from New York. and so forth. and analyxe them. We want to count them every dav and determine their number. We want to count them before rain falls and even during the falling rain. That is only one of probably, I might say. one hundred prob iems that we want to investigate at exper- imsntAl stations"