The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-08-11
NEW BALLOONS
WILL EXPLORE
SHAKESPEARE
Small Flying Laboratories
TO Cost Only Fraction OF
Big Bags.
lcopYrirht. les4. bY Unlted Pressl


CHICAGO, Aug. ia flying
startosphere laboratory which auto
matically sends its data by radio to
scientists on the ground has been
perfected and may make its first
flight within a week.
Professor Arthur H Compton, No
bel prize winner and University Of
Chicago physicist, tolda today in an
exclusive interview of a years work
to obtain such laboratory balloon,
The first actual flight awaits only
few adjustments.
Successful grounding tests have
been completed with complicated
instruments which will calculate
barometric pressure, temperature
and electrical intensity. With this
information, scientists will be able
to learn new habits of the myster-
ious coSmic rays.
The professor talked confidently
Of obtaining records from a free bal
loon ten miles or more in the sky.
He paid special tribute to Professor
J. M. Benade of Forman Christian
college at Lahore, India, who has
just finished a year here working
with Dr. Compton in perfecting the
new balloon.
Records Kept Safe
Importance of the automatic
radio is that it will SOpersede the
haphazard method of photograph
ing records in a balloon and then
anxiously waiting for them to be
returned when the bag drops to
earth. The new balloon may drop
in the ocean and the records are
still intact-already received by the
ground crew.
Professor Compton's gray eyes
sparkled with enthusiasm as he ex-
planned that the results from a few
flights of the new laboratory bal
looms, costing a few hundred dollars,
might be as valuable to science as a
stratosphere flight which would cost
as many hundreds of thousands and
also endanger human lives. The
professor, almost youthful in ap-
pearance despite his CRAVING hair,
was as excited as schoolbOy talk
ing about his hobby.
The idea of automat ically obtain
ing scientific information from bah
looms long has intrigued scientists,
the Nobel prize winner said. He de-
tailed many efforts to work out in
StrumentS that would obtain the
data and transmit it to the ground.
The present effort by the University
Of Chicago group is the first, he said
that has approached success.
Radio in Chief Role
Radio impulses will be sent out
continuously after the balloon leaves
the ground, Professor Compton ex-
planned. Records will be obtained
by deyiations from a fixed radio
wave.
At intervals of fractions of
minute, the barometric pressure will
be signalled to the waiting experts
on the ground. Every change will
give them the clew to what happens
in the floating laboratory. 1t will
be as expert as if human paSSen-
ger were aboard sending the infor-
nation.
Temperature readings will be sent
less frequently and the electrical in,
tensity, which is vital to computing
information regarding the cosmic
rays, will be broadcast at ten-min-
ute intervals.
The neutrality-suspicious. will be
midgets compared to the strato-
sphere bags carrying men, which
cover acres of ground. At the max
imum expansion. the new type will
be only fifteen feet across. The in
struments which will take various
readings and then broadcast them to
the ground crew will weigh only ten
pounds.
When all this data is compiled,
previous records checked and a con-
Clusion drawn, science may have
pushed back little more the mys-
terry surrounding cosmic rays. Thus
the laboratory balloons may, in
part, answer the question of where
is the world going, anyway"