Evening star., 1921-08-16
Due to Dust Particles.

Dust. however. that bane of the
! housekeeper and the curse of the
automobile tourist. plays a vital part
in our lives. Though it sometimes
seems to suffocate US, without II We
could have no rain. as the vapor
would not condense. and without Its
power of refraction our daylight
| would not be SO bright. and the color
| ing of our sunsets would be almost
entirely lost.
The loess of northern China, q fine
yellow powder brought by the winds
| from the desert regions beyond and
/, deposited in places several hundred
| feet in thickness has been titled for
thousand of years. without any arti-
| fetal fertilization. and without signs
of exhaustion. Beds of volcanic dust
are to be found in Kansas and Nebras-
| ka today. in some places as much as
thirty feet in thickness. though there
| were no volcanoes in the past and
| none at present within hundreds of
miles of the deposits. The wind is
| the culprit or benefactor.
| steamers out in the middle of the
| Atlantic often have their sails red
| dened with dust blown from the
| Sahara, and sometimes the rains of
| southern Europe are colored by dust
! from the same source. In 1901, four
days of March winds are believed to
about 1000, 600 tons of Sahara dust,
| most of it falling south of the Alps,
but some of ii being carried as far
as the Bali Sea.
Wind blown dust also gives rise to
some interesting phenomena. When
dust falls on glaciers or deposits of
| snow near the mountain tops. every
dust particle melts its way through
| the ice. sometimes several inches in
! depth, and if there are a great many
| of these dust wells the mountain
+! climber must watch his step. Use
i was made of this Knowledge by en-
gineerS in melting SHOWS preliminary
| to the building of the new Bergen
/ railway in southern Norway. -
| No Peak Above "Dust Zone"
J 1T is probable that no mountain top
| is high enough above the earth to be
entirely free from some dust. eSpe-
| cially that thrown out during VOL
canic eruptions. In great explosion.
such as that of Krakatoa. in 1883. dust
+; is shot into the upper atmosphere ra-
ther than picked up by it. Dust parti-
| cleS from krakatoa Travelled around
the world, some of it completing its
first trip in fifteen days. Before this
giant shook the world with its mighty
upheaving We were ignorant Of the
! winds that prevailed at over ten miles
above the earth's surface. The dust
so colored these upper reaches that
canny scientists were able to trace up
per wind movements. to record them
| upon their charts and to tell US that
mighty air streams are flowing twen-
| ty miles above our heads.
! Long before meteorologists real
! ICED the part played by the dust in the
upper atmosphere following volcanic
explosions. they recorded as phenome-
nal and inexplicable certain dense dry
fogs that neither abundant rains nor
fierce winds drove away. Today we
can easily explain them, because we
know that the fog was really dust IN
the atmosphere high above the rain
and wind clouds. In some places these
.fogs' made the sun invisible until IL
had risen high above the horizon. ana
colored and reflected the light OF the
new moon until it appeared as bright
as that of the full moon at midnight.
Beneath the earth's surface tne
dust plays as fantastic a part as 1t
does above its crust. In mines 1t in
creases infiammability and assists in
explosion of gases which would other-
wise be incombustible, probably act
ing in the same capacity, as the cata-
lytic agent in a chemical reaction.