Something in the Air

The atmosphere is full of vibrations that are too feeble to be felt. No one knows where the vibrations come from or what starts them. Last week, backed by $25,000 from the weather-minded U.S. Navy, the Rev. James B. Macelwane, S.J., St. Louis University, a tubby, genial priest who is one of the world's best seismologists, was laying plans to find out.

Father Macelwane discovered the air vibrations ten years ago when testing a colleague's theory that small tremors in the earth (microseisms) are caused by changes in the atmosphere. He built an oversized barometer which makes a wiggly line on a strip of paper to indicate minute variations of air pressure. Sometimes, he found, the line was almost straight. Then a "microbarographic storm" would sweep across St. Louis. For hours or even days, the line would jump up and down in jagged peaks and valleys. The mysterious little waves seemed to have no immediate connection with weather changes, wind velocity or anything else perceptible.

To learn more about these waves, Father Macelwane is going to set up three of his microbarographs in a triangle measuring several hundred feet to a side. By comparing the records of the three instruments he can measure the waves, and tell what direction they come from. His next step will be a larger triangle flanked by other instruments hundreds of miles from St. Louis. This attempt to match the atmospheric vibrations to changes in the weather may produce a new and valuable method of weather forecasting (the Navy has bet its $25,000 on the possibility that it will). Father Macelwane, though hopeful, is as cautious about his work as any other scientist: "We don't know what the vibrations are or what causes them. We just know they are present."

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