New Scientist - Internet Archive...NEWSCIENTIST(No349).25JULYI96J NEWSCIENTIST CromwellHouse,FulwoodPlace,HighHolborn,London,WC1 Telephone:HOLborn7554.Telegrams:Newscient,London Volume19.Number349

NEW SCIENTIST

Soviet aims in astronomyand space researchProfessor Sir BERNARD LOVELL, FRS

Engineering design: why do westill get fatigue failures?C. E. PHILLIPS and N. E. FROST, National Engineering Laboratory

Nature's other greensDr G. M. BLACKBURN, University Chemical Laboratory, Cambridge

Challenge of experimental medicineDr S. H. ZA1D1, Central Drug Research Laboratory, Lucknow

Colour television for EuropeRONALD BROWN

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NEW SCIENTIST (No 349). 25 JULY I96J

NEW SCIENTISTCromwell House, Fulwood Place, High Holborn, London, WC1

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Volume 19. Number 349

CONTENTS

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Soviet aims in astronomy and space researchby Professor Sir Bernard Lovell, FRS

Engineering design in Britain : The Feilden Report

Why do we still get fatigue failures?by C. E. Phillips and N. E. Frost

Nature's other greens by Dr G. M. Blackburn

American Newsletter

Science in British Industry

Radio transmits the strain: Production line for cabbages:The corrosive waters of the Thames: Heat-treating steel byelectrolysis : Locating a leak between gas and steam.

Science in Overseas Industry

Television keeps the traffic moving: Bacteria to make apackaging film?: Rocket, ahoy!: Watch on the melt:Films of vermiculite : Ore to steel in one plant.

The challenge of experimental medicineby Dr S. H. Zaidi

Colour television for Europe by Ronald Brown

Trends and Discoveries

Comparing mean sea level in Britain and France: Pineneedles record fallout: Italian-US satellite: A new wayto find the brain's blood flow: Lilies supply an amino acidanalogue: Monkeys and new foods: The best use of beesin orchards: Baiting rabbits: What makes the stable flyslarl probing.

Letters

Recession of the galaxies: Why a loaded wire cuts no ice:London's neglected technology museum: What's in aname'.' : Change of name : Rule of thumb.

BooksReviews by Tudor G. Ingersoll, Dr N. W. Simmondsand Dr Mary Hesse.

Contributors

Classified Advertisements

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Copyrighted material

NEW SCIENTIST (No. 149). 25 IUI Y 19 6 3 163

C atorial

The £10,000,000 Decision

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NEW SCIENTIST {No. 349). 25 JULY 1963 167

Notes and Comments

Sunspots to the rescue?WHAT are wc to make of the remarkable message that Sir Bernard

Lovel! brought back last week from his talks with the President

of the Soviet Academy of Sciences? As he relates in his article on page174 of this issue, Professor Lovell found that Academician Kcldysh laidemphasis on the practical difficulties of getting men back alive froma journey to the Moon, and especially on the problem of lethal radia-tion from the Sun. Academician Keldysh also said that the definition

by the world's scientists of the precise purposes of putting a man onthe Moon would be the first step towards an international cooperativeprogramme.

That these were more than the casual remarks of one scientist chat-ting with another is shown by the fact that Academician Ambartsumian,who was present at the conversations, quickly communicated their sub-stance to the International Astronomical Union and that AcademicianKeldysh was anxious that Professor Lovell should pass them on to highauthorities in the West.

Is it, then, a serious bid to open discussions aimed at ending the US-Soviet Moon race (or, what is almost the same thing, a declaration that theRussians are opting out and would be prepared to discuss collaborativeventures)? Professor Lovell believes that it is. and it certainly correspondswith the present political climate revealed by the test-ban talks in Mos-cow and the recent successful visit of Dr Glenn Seaborg, Chairman ofthe US Atomic Energy Commission, to the Soviet Union. Some will nodoubt view it all with great suspicion. May it not be a device to encouragethe already restive US congressmen to chop the Apollo programme sothat the Russians can be sure of winning the race? Or may not theRussians have had such setbacks that, thinking the Americans are nowlikely to win. they want to call the race off? The Americans, we canbe sure, will be wary of those possibilities.

Nevertheless, an amicable agreement to end the Moon race would beof such political, economic, and scientific benefit to both sides and tothe world at large that the possibility should now be positively pur-sued. On present showing, the Moon race will reach its climax at aperiod of maximum sunspot activity, so Academician Keldysh is onfirm technical ground when he pinpoints the problem of consequentlethal radiation from the Sun. The Russians have given no descriptionof a lunar landing vehicle and Professor Lovell suspects that the plansdo not yet exist; the "Bug" of Project Apollo would afford little pro-tection to the astronauts, and although the Americans arc known to bethinking or using very powerful superconducting magnets to deflect thedeadly rays there must be doubts about their feasibility in this decade.

There is no reason why Western scientists should not respond toAcademician Keldysh's specific proposal that the scientific objectives of

a lunar landing should be defined. The International AstronomicalUnion, the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the Interna-tional Academy of Astronautics (which is already engaged in studyinga project for an international observatory on the Moon) all provide suit-able meeting-grounds. There need be no commitment at this stage toan abandonment of present rivalries in a collaborative programme, butthe possibility might be brought closer.

Liquid nitrogen freezesbrain tissue

BOTH Newcastle General Hospitaland Manchester Royal Infirmary now

have equipment for carrying out surgicaloperations on the brain by freezingtissue inside it. Briefly, the technique isto locate a particular part of the brain byX-ray pictures in three dimensions, makea hole in the skull, insert an instrumentso that its tip is in the right place and thencool the tip with liquid nitrogen. A spheri-cal lesion is caused in the brain when thetemperature at the tip is lowered suffici-ently. In fact, the diameter of the lesionis dependent on the freezing time and thetemperature reached. For example, witha freezing time of three minutes and atemperature at the tip of the instrumentof — 40°C, the lesion's maximumdiameter is 6 mm; at —50 C the diameteris 8 mm.

So far. the most important applicationof the technique is in the treatment ofParkinson's disease and. since the New-castle General got its equipment in June,eight cases have been treated there withsuccess. Most of the treatments with themethod have been done in the UnitedStates, however, and the distressingsymptoms of tremor and rigidity havebeen abolished in nearly all cases, withno problems of post-operative recovery.There are about 50 American equip-ments, made by Union Carbide, in actionthe world over, 40 of them in the USA,though the Soviet Union is also practising"cryosurgery".

Probably the most important character-istic of the low-temperature method ofbrain surgery is its reversibility. Whenthe temperature at the tip of the instru-ment reaches 0°C or thereabouts, thesurgeon carrying out the operation is able

to check the effects of cooling on the re-

actions of the patient, who remains con-scious throughout. If he discovers that

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168

Notes and Comments continued

some of the reactions show that the freez-ing is producing undesirable effects, he

can raise the temperature of the tip, and

the brain cells then return to normal func-tioning. If the check shows the rightphysiological effects, he can go ahead andlower the temperature to make a perman-ent lesion. Reversibility also means thatthe surgeon is able to freeze areas in the

brain precisely because he can tell fromthe patient's reactions if the freezing

sphere is too large and can then reduce itwithout damage to the brain cells.Making the equipment for such opera-

tions presented Union Carbide with sometricky problems of insulation, especiallywith insulation between the freezing tipand the rest of the probe—called thecannula—which must be kept warm. Thefirm will not say how the solution wasachieved except to state that it involved

the use of patented "Super Insulation"techniques with glass fibre and alumin-ium laminations. The silver tip of theprobe is cooled by a liquid nitrogenspray, the rest of the probe being insu-lated by vacuum so that no part of thebrain is cooled except in the target area.

The liquid nitrogen is supplied to the tipthrough an inner tube in the cannula,which has an outside diameter of 2.5mm and the withdrawn heat from thebrain tissue transforms the liquid into gas

which is then pumped away through anintermediate tube. A thermocouple moni-tors the tip's temperature which is shownon a recorder so that the surgeon can setthe temperature he needs; the equipmentwill then hold it steady to ±2'C.

Cryogenic surgery is in its early stagesand there may be many other successfulapplications for it in the treatment of suchthings as brain tumours and glandulardisorders. By the use of specially de-signed instruments it may be possible toseal off part of the brain—reversibly—so that more can be learnt about brainmechanisms and how drugs act on thebrain's functions. But the basicidea is not new; the earliest investiga-tion of freezing temperatures applied tothe brain was reported in 1883.

Cross-country oil

pipeline in Britain

CONSTRUCTION of the Thames-Mersey pipeline for petroleum pro-

ducts should begin next year. The govern-ment announced last week that the pipe-line scheme submitted by United King-dom Oil Pipelines Ltd (Esso, Mobil,Petrofina. Regent and Shell Mex andBP) should go forward in preference tothe scheme submitted by Trunk PipelinesLtd (a group of financial and other in-terests headed by S. G. Warburg and CoLtd). The government's approval of the

v f w s c

UKOP scheme was given under the Pipe-lines Act of 1962 which was put on thestatute book, oddly enough, as a direct

result of Trunk Pipelines' originalscheme for an oil pipeline between thesame two places.

Technically, the differences between

the two schemes arc slight, apart fromthe method of laying and the route w hichthe pipes would follow. UKOP proposea more or less direct route from theThames to Ellesmere Port, on theMersey, via St Albans, Northamptonand Birmingham, with a spur pipelineto Nottingham. The pipes will rununderground. Trunk Pipelines, on theother hand, proposed a scheme whichwould enable the pipeline to follow rail-ways and canals (being laid for longdistances under water). Revenue wouldhave been shared with the respectivetransport boards. The Minister of Powerdecided in favour of the UKOP schemebecause of "assured support ", greatereconomies in the cost of transportingoil, and an initial cost which was between£2 million and £3 million less than thatof the Trunk Pipelines project. UKOPhope that construction of the new pipe-line will start towards the end of 1964and that it will begin to operate late in1965 or early in 1966. Land-ownersalong the proposed route have beenapproached and UKOP reports thaiabout 60 per cent have agreed in prin-ciple to let the line run through theirland provided they get appropriate com-pensation.

The line will carry light oils motor-car petrol, aviation fuel, diesel fuel,paraffin and liquid feedstocks which arcused for enriching town gas supplies andin the chemical industry. It will not carryunrefined oil because this would needto be heated to allow it to flow easily,so the pipeline would have to be insu-lated. Demand for this type of oil isrising, but not yet to the extent whichwould justify the additional cost.Once it begins to operate, no part of

the pipeline will ever be empty. "Pack-ages" of the different oils will flow alongit in computer-programmed sequence totheir respective destinations. They willbe separated by Maloney spheres—verytight-fitting rubber balls filled withglycol— and the slight mixture of oilsat each interface will be drained off

bNl)ST (No. 349). 15 JULY 1963

automatically at each terminal. Thediameter of the pipes will range fromeight to fourteen inches according to thetraffic load, and in addition to pumpingstations at the terminals there will bepumping stations at each point wherethe diameter of the pipe changes and atthe junction of the spur to Nottingham.The projected pipeline will be linkedwith the already completed pipeline froml awley refinery, on Southampton Water,10 London.

Although the principal purpose of thepipeline will be to carry oil from theriverside refineries to the oil-hungryMidlands, it is not expected to reducethe number of oil tankers on Britain'sroads. It is hoped, however, that thenumber of tankers operating in centralLondon may be reduced; a depot on thepipeline at St Albans should enablelankers to deliver from there instead offrom riverside depots via the congestedstreets of the city.

Canadian air-scatterradio system

A $5 MILLION communicationssystem which bounces radio waves011 the atmosphere more than a mileabove the Earth's surface now linksthe rugged coastal regions of Alaska,British Columbia and the United Statesalong the edge of the Pacific Ocean. This"over-the-horizon" microwave bridge— itis 334 miles long—uses the technique oftropospheric scatter to link AnnetteIsland, Alaska, Trulch Island in Caa-mano Sound and Port Hardy on Van-couver Island.

Tropospheric scatter, which uses theturbulent lower atmosphere (the tropo-sphere) as a reflector to bounce micro-wave signals over the horizon, has en-gaged communications engineers for thepast decade, but most systems built sofar have been for military purposes. Theattractions are the speed with which asystem can be installed, and its ability tobridge terrain over which a cable linkwould be difficult to lay. An importantexample is NATO's "Ace-High" com-munications network in Europe.The new North American system is one

of the few large-capacity commercialsystems of its kind, hav ing 240 channelsfor the transmission of speech and data.It has been installed by two subsidiariesof the General Telephone and Elec-tronics Corporation, New York : BritishColumbia Telephone Company andAlaska Telephone Corporation.

Powerful microwave transmitters in-stalled at Annette Island and Port Hardyfeed large directional aerials which directa beam of microwaves over the horizon.A portion of the beam bounces off the

Co

NEW SCIENTIST (No. 3 4 9 ). 2 J JULY 1963 169

troposphere and is collected by sensitivereceivers on Trutch Island, amplified, andretransmitted by the same process to theterminal receivers. The network feeds aconventional microwave chain at PortHardy and at Annette Island it is linkedwith civilian and defence communica-tions.

An inclement climate and the sheersize of the aerials needed to collect thescattered signals have made their con-struction a major engineering task. Thereare eight in all, two at each terminal andfour on Trutch Island; each is 60-ftsquare, weighs 70 tons, and is built towithstand a 120-mile-an-hour gale andto support an inch of ice.

Adding to the world'ssupply of protein

A CLUE to greater meat productionmay be found in the commercialsynthesis of the amino-acid lysine, whichis now being made by the Dutch Staats-mijnen. Although established over halfa century ago as a mining concern, theStaatsmijnen now has ramifications inseveral other fields such as plastics andbiochemistry. It was started as a slate-owned organisation but has developedinto a large industry, which, like severalother state-owned companies in Holland,operates in the same manner as a privatecompany, and profitably. In 1930 thecompany constructed plant for the fixa-tion of atmospheric nitrogen and fromthis arose an interest in organic com-pounds containing nitrogen. This led intothe field of plastics and amino-acidsynthesis.

In 1958, Staatsmijnen made lysine on asmall scale in the laboratory, but it wasanother three years before it could beproduced by a pilot commercial plant. Afull-sized commercial plant is now underconstruction at Geleen in Holland for themanufacture of lysine, which is one of theso-called essential amino-acids thatanimals and man cannot synthesise in thebody for normal growth and nutritionand which must therefore be supplied inthe diet. Foods containing solely veget-able proteins do not provide a diet offully balanced and essential amino-acids.It is because of this that animal productsrich in protein, such as fish meal, bonemeal, blood and skim milk, which allhave a high lysine content, are added toanimal feeds. As some quarter of amillion tons of protein are required daily

by the world's population it is a problemof some magnitude to find enough animalfeeding stuffs to give to the animals. Notonly more but also better-class animalfood is required by the world.

Animal feeds which contain the essen-tial lysine cannot be produced withoutlysine, and so a vicious circle is set up

if we are to rely on lysine from naturalsources. This circle can be broken by thelarge-scale production of synthetic lysine,which could be used to make animalfeeds go farther. Moreover animals fedon lysine supplements show increasedfertility and are not so fat. This shouldhelp further to increase the protein rationof the world.

The commercial synthesis of lysine atthe Dutch Staatsmijnen factory is onlya start. The amino-acid has also beenmade in Japan by a fermentation process,although so far it has not been possibleto apply this commercially. The commer-cial synthesis of other essential amino-acids, such as methionine, tryptophane

and arginine, may be expected to followand to contribute to the solution of theproblem of the world's supply of protein.

Swedish samples of thehighest clouds

RECENT sampling with rockets firedfrom a Swedish range has provided

upper atmosphere physicists with the first

definite indication of what makes up theEarth's highest clouds. At a height ofsome fifty miles there is a sudden dropin the temperature of the atmospherefrom freezing point to about -80C. Itis here, in the "mesopause". that the so-called "noctilucent" clouds occur. Theirname is derived from the fact that theyare only visible at night: they remainilluminated after the Sun has set at theEarth's surface owing to their greatheight and the effects of atmospheric re-fraction on the Sun's rays.The origin of these clouds is generally

assumed to be associated with the coldregion of the atmosphere but there hasbeen considerable dispute in the pastabout whether the noctilucent clouds arecomposed of ice crystals or dust particles.One of the few tentative indications thatthey might be dust particles was a by-product of the great Siberian meteoritethai fell on 30 June 1908 clouds verylike noctilucent ones were produced bymeteoritic dust in the upper atmosphere.Now a device fitted to a Nike-Cajtm

rocket launched from Kronogard. N.Sweden, has brought back to Earth thefirst samples of particles that definitelyseem to be constituents of these clouds.The project, a combined venture of the

Swedish Space Committee and the USNational Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration undertaken by C. L. Hemen-way of the Dudley Observatory, Albany,N.Y.. R. K. Soberman of the US AirForce Cambridge Research Laboratories,and G. Witt of the Meteorological Insti-tute at the University of Stockholm, isreported in Nature.

Out of four attempts to obtain sampleslast summer, two proved successful.These were similar flights but one wasmade at a time when the experimenterscould see noctilucent clouds, and theother effectively a control—when theyseemed, to both ground and airborneobservers, to be absent. The samplersconsisted of very high purity, specially

prepared surfaces designed to detectsolid particles and also to detect whethervolatile particles or particle coatings hadbeen deposited. A spring mechanismopened ports on the samplers at a heightof about 45 miles, and closed them justbelow 60 miles.

Examination of the samples after re-trieval showed that both flights hadresulted in the capture of solid particles,but for the flight when the noctilucentclouds were visible the numbers of par-ticles were higher by two or three ordersof magnitude. The particles, moreover,hud a size distribution ranging betweena twentieth and half a micron, consistentwith what was previously known aboutthe optical properties of the clouds.

Under an electron microscope manyof the particles from the actual cloud,caught on the sampling surface, could beseen to have a surrounding circular pat-tern, probably caused by a melted coatof ice which originally surrounded theparticle. Those obtained on the controlflight did not show these circular pat-terns. Both dust nuclei and ice thus evi-dently play some part in the formationof the clouds.

Where do the particles come from?There is still a lot of analysis to do onthe Swedish samples. Preliminary com-position tests with the electron beammicroanalyser indicate that they containiron and nickel. Some give a consistentbut unidentified electron diffraction pat-

tern. Researchers are also extending thestatistical analysis. Future experimentsare to be undertaken to look into otherfactors relating to the noctilucent clouds,

such as how the particle density varieswith height.

An attack on theexamination system

"PEDANTRY and the pursuit of\ mediocrity are in the ascendant",

said Sir George Pickering, Regius Pro-fessor of Medicine at Oxford, in hispresidential address to the British

Copyrighted material

170 NEW SCIENTIST (No. 349), 25 JULY 1963

Notes and Comments continued

Medical Association last week. He wasattacking the system under which astudent's university entrance, studies andsubsequent qualification depend mainlyon examination results, thus encouragingthe "swots" and leaving any character ortalent assessment out of the picture.

Sir George's comments emphasise asituation which has become progressivelymore apparent to those who, like him-self, practise a profession and teach it,loo. Scientific, engineering and medicalstudies are particularly affected by theexamination strait-jacket because theyare based on deduction from known facts.A student who does not know enoughfacts is easy to discover in an examina-tion, but a candidate who is wellequipped with them can relatively easilydisguise a lack of deductive and intuitiveability in the subject.

The result has been frequently ob-served those with the best paperqualifications in a subject are by nomeans always the best qualified. The arti-ficial conditions of an examination inwhich problems are set to be solved ina fixed time with few. if any, sourcesof reference are. psychologically, as badas they could be. Indeed the "'good"examinee may possess qualities dia-metrically opposed to those required forgood professional practice.

This question, when raised about the"ll-plus", has always produced greatheat and set tests for eleven-year-oldshave been modified or even abolished.But the same considerations apply to allexaminations that are faced later.

The probable answer to Sir George'scharge is a greater use of the assessmentsystem over the entire period of study.If a finger-tip knowledge of facts is re-quired, then examinations of lower stan-dard would almost certainly fill the bill.But to find out whether a student is suit-able to become a doctor, physicist,engineer or teacher it is essential to watchhim at work and to judge accordingly.

There are signs that a more liberalapproach to examinations is slowlyevolving. Limited, or even free, use ofsource books is now allowed in someadvanced medical and scientific examina-tions and the set tasks are tending toplace a greater premium on interpreta-tion, though the artificial time limitremains.

Assessments, too. are more widelyused, most frequently as a check onwritten examinations but sometimes asa major factor in their own right. Acommon snag is that good teaching pre-supposes a personal relationship betweenteacher and student and some degree ofbias is almost unavoidable. But thereare statistical means of dealing withsmall personal error. Beyond this it

would be unrealistic not to rely on pro-fessional judgment.

Sherlock Holmes said that all factsshould be relegated to the filing cabinet,leaving the mind uncluttered for deduc-tive reasoning. Few psychologists wouldagree with the implication that reasoningcapacity is diminished by knowing thefacts. But most people in the scientificprofessions would agree that how manyfacts a student has off by heart is oneof the less important standards forjudging professional ability. What mustbe known is his ability to do the job,wiiich the present examination systemdiscovers hardly at all.

Seventy-five years

of Dunlop tyres

JOHN BOYD DUNLOP was not theJ first inventor of the pneumatic tyre norwas he most responsible for its commer-cial success. Yet he is the man who, inpopular mythology, gets the credit for itsinvention. The value of possessing an in-ventor's name no doubt encouraged theDunlop company to build up his reputa-tion, though, in fact, acrimony markedtheir relations; and he did have the ad-vantage of living for many years afterthe pneumatic tyre had become a familiararticle, while having his name and faceused virtually as Dunlop's trademark.Now, 75 years after he applied for hispatent, the company is again celebratingthe existence of its famous creator and,in spite of all the things he did not do,Dunlop deserves to be remembered asthe man who started the development ofthe pneumatic tyre at the time when amarket existed for it—on the bicycle.When Robert Thomson invented the

pneumatic tyre in 1845, it could be usedonly on carriages and the constructionthat he employed was not really robustenough to stand up to regular use on thenail-strewn roads of the time. Thomson,however, continued to use them on hisown carriages until his death in 1873.He at least demonstrated the reducedrolling resistance that the pneumatic tyreoffered on rough surfaces and he pub-lished his results in the Mechanic's Maga-zine, so this was by no means ahidden invention even if it was stillborn.

When Thomson turned to work on steamtraction engines later in his life, headopted solid rubber tyres, for he had toaccept that his pneumatics were unsuit-able for such heavy vehicles.

If Dunlop had not hit upon the ideaof the pneumatic tyre in 1887, when look-ing for ways of making his son's bicyclerun more easily and smoothly over thecobbled streets of Belfast, somebodywould probably have turned up Thom-son's patent and seen its utility some timein the next decade or so. But the delaywould have made a significant differenceto the development of the tyre, of thecycle industry and then of the motor in-dustry that grew out of it. Even afterDunlop obtained his patent, without thePatent Office realising he had been antici-pated, it was two years before Thomson'swas discovered.Having lost the monopoly that it

thought it possessed, the Dunlop com-pany only managed to gain its predomin-ance by the toughness and commercialacumen of its first managing director, theDublin paper merchant Harvey du Cros,which led him to buy the key patent onmeans of securing a tyre to the rim. Itwas taken out by C. K. Welch, andcovers the method now universally used.With this protection,, the companyflourished through the 1890s, thoughDunlop himself, after fading into thebackground, resigned from the board in1895 and was thereafter active amongstthe company's competitors.

Is there an atmospherearound Mercury?

THE planet Mercury, w ith a diameterof about 3000 miles and gravity

much less than the Earth's, has beengenerally regarded as virtually devoid ofatmosphere. Various "obscurations" ofthe surface markings, reported manyyears ago by G. V. Schiaparelli andE. M. Antoniadi, have not been con-firmed, and Audouin Dollfus, who hascarried out a long series of observationswith the refractor at the Pic du Midi, hasnever been able to record them, so thattheir existence is extremely doubtful. Onthe other hand, Dollfus, using polari-

metric methods, announced in 1953 thathe had established the presence of ahighly tenuous atmosphere round Mer-cury. The ground density was about3/ 1000 of that of the Earth's atmosphereat sea-level, corresponding to a pressure

of about 1 mm. of mercury metal. This iswhat is usually termed a laboratoryvacuum, and an atmosphere of such anorder would be unable to support anyform of Earth-type life, even if the con-ditions on Mercury were suitable in otherways. Dollfus did not speculate as to the

NEW SCIENTIST (No. 3 4 9 ) . 25 JULY 19*3 171

composition of the atmosphere, and theobservations were, of course, extremely

difficult and delicate.

The only time when Mercury may beobserved high in the sky against a rela-tively dark background is when the Sunis hidden, during a total solar eclipse. InFebruary 1961, a total eclipse was visiblefrom the Crimean Astrophysical Obser-vatory, and N. A. Kozyrev took advan-tage of it to make observations of Mer-cury in an attempt to confirm the exist-

ence of an atmosphere there. Conditionswere good, but the results were negative.

Rather unexpectedly, Kozyrev hasnow announced some new results whichfavour the presence of a Mercurianatmosphere. With the Crimean reflector,he has obtained twenty spectrograms ofthe planet, and has detected emissionlines which he believes to be due toluminescence in the atmosphere of Mer-cury; he even suggests that the densitymay be as high as 1/100 that of the ter-restrial mantle. The emission lines areattributed to hydrogen.

There have been no previous sugges-tions that Mercury could be associatedwith a hydrogen atmosphere; in view ofthe planet's low escape velocity, lightgases would be expected to be lost veryrapidly. Kozyrev does not believe, how-ever, that the atmosphere is "permanent"in the accepted sense of the word. On histheory, the hydrogen is steadily lost intospace, but is replenished by fresh hydro-gen sent out by the Sun and collected bythe planet; he calculates that the atmo-sphere is entirely renewed in a period ofabout 100 000 .years.

Kozyrev's results, announced at a con-ference held at the Pulkovo Observatoryin Leningrad, are bound to cause contro-versy, just as his lunar observations havedone, and it is not likely that they willbe generally accepted until full confirma-tion has been obtained elsewhere. How-ever, his work is of the greatest interest,and serves to emphasise that the questionof the existence or non-existence of atenuous atmosphere around Mercury isstill completely open.

Hydrofoil craft to

hunt submarines

THE latest recruit to anti-submarinewarfare has wings that are sub-

merged in the ocean. It is a 50-knothydrofoil craft, built by Boeing andabout to enter service with the US Navy,specifically to hunt and destroy high-speed submarines; it is expected to bethe precursor of a swift new family ofnaval craft.

The salient point about the hydrofoil

is its high speed and efficiency, achievedby employing wing-like "foils" that raisethe vessel clear of the water at speed, soeliminating the drag of water on the hull.In this way it is hoped to reach speedsof 100 knots- speeds that requireelectronic controls of a complexity com-parable to those of an aircraft.

Boeing's hydrofoil, PCH 1 (patrolcraft, hydrofoil), is powered at speed bytwo Bristol Siddeley Proteus marine gasturbines, each of 4250 h.p. It uses two11-ft-long foils, totally submerged, bymeans of which its hull is lifted clear ofthe water at about half-speed. Thesefoils are retracted into the hull at lowspeeds or in shallow water.

Automatic stabilisation equipmentsimilar in design to that used in aircraft

has been developed for PCH I to con-trol its altitude and its attitude inpilch and roll; this also senses the yawrate and controls the craft during tight,fast turns.

"Leap-frog" tactics by a pair ofhydrofoils have been worked out bynaval experts, in which the first craft willhunt by sonar with its foils retracted. Ifit detects a submarine, it will guide the

second craft towards the target at highspeed. This craft, on reaching the posi-tion, will retract its foils and employits own sonar, then provide its com-panion with a fresh "fix": and so on,until the submarine is pin-pointed.

Further hints of

Labour science policy

THE idea of a Ministry of HigherEducation and Research, to im-

plement a programme of universityexpansion sustained at the maximumpracticable rate, was favoured at aprivate meeting on science organised bythe Fabian Society in London on 20 and21 July. After the meeting. Mr RichardCrossman, the Opposition's chief spokes-man on science, who presided, togetherwith Professor P. M. S. Blackett andDr B. V. Bowden, who also played aleading pan. reported the trend of thediscussions. Over 70 people MPs,scientist*, social scientists, industrialists

and others—had participated, includingMr Harold Wilson, Leader of the Oppo-sition.

The meeting was called to discuss theinterim conclusions of working partiesexamining the problems and opportuni-ties of science in industry, of manpowerand higher education and of science andgovernment, with a view to advising theLabour leadership. Mr Crossman saidafterwards that Mr Wilson had em-phasised the importance of the applica-tion of science in industry. He also saidthat even if there were a general elec-tion soon his party would have a sciencepolicy ready; if it were postponed, thestudies would continue. He drew aparallel between the scope of his privategroups and that of the Robbins andTrend committees advising the govern-ment. The meeting had supported theidea that an Association of LabourScientists should be set up.

Summarising the views of the meetingon the universities, Dr Bowden (prin-cipal of the Manchester College of Tech-nology) said that there should be con-tinuous and steady growth at themaximum practicable rate and thatBritish universities should now acceptthe obligations to society that they hadhitherto neglected. Suggesting that therewas almost unlimited scope for expan-sion. Dr Bowden pointed out that, whilea child born in California in 1944 had a1 in 2 chance of going to a university, achild of the same age in Britain had only1 chance in 25. The present governmentwas looking to a student population of170 000 by the early 1970s; the Labourscientists were planning for 280 000 bythe late 1970s. Big universities of 10 000or more students, rather than a multi-plicity of small ones, were preferred, sothat new disciplines could developrapidly. There was a special opportunityfor urban renewal of northern cities inthis policy.

Professor Blackett pointed out thatthe cost would be relatively small — risingfrom 0 6 per cent of the gross nationalproduct to about 1.5 per cent, and that,although there would be resistance fromsome academics, rapid expansion andplenty of money made new ideas easierto implement. "Academics seldom refusemoney", he remarked.

The Minister of Higher Education andResearch,, it was said, would be fullyresponsible for the humanities as well asfor science at the universities. One candeduce from this that the Labour scien-tists must also be thinking of hiving offthe Minister for Science's responsibilityfor science in industry to a Minister ofTechnology, otherwise the set-up wouldbe too cumbersome: if so. the Ministerfor Science as such would disappear.

Cor.

172 NEW SCIENTIST (No. 349), 25 JULY 196}

Notes and Comments continued

British research into

parapsychology

PERIODIC reports of increasing re-search into extrasensory perception

(ESP) in the Soviet Union have raised

the question of whether comparable

studies are in progress in Britain. Scien-

tific interest in the possibility of telepathy

and alleged related phenomena seems

to be very limited and recently several

experiments appear to have failed. Theacademic prestige of the subject has suf-

fered from the critical attacks of MrC. E. M. Hansel of Manchester Univer-sity who has argued (see S'ew Scientist,26 February, 1959) that the possibility of

fraud has not been ruled out of other-

wise adequately designed experiments,

and the best researchers are conscious of

the extreme difficulty of devising repeat-

able experiments.

The investigation of ESP has tradition-ally been the province of the 80-year-old

Society for Psychical Research, but the

last eight numbers of the Society'sJournal have not recorded a single ex-

perimental study taking place in Britain.

The most active researchers. Dr S. G.Soal, Mr G. W. Fisk and Dr D. J. West,the president of the Society, are appar-

ently no longer engaged in experimentalwork. The extraordinary public intereststill commanded by ESP research,coupled with the almost total lack ofsystematic experimentation, suggests that

the Society fulfils a philosophical andsocial rather than a scientific purpose.

The only academic centre in whichESP research has become established isOxford. In 1961, a para psychological

laboratory was organised as a researchsection of the university's Unit ofBiometry. It is presided over by anAmerican. Mr Stephen Abrams, whoseresearchers are proceeding on theassumption that ESP is an unconsciousfunction associated with a high degree

of personality disassociation. Thus mostof their work has centred around hyp-nosis which they interpret in terms ofPavlovian conditioning. They havereached the conclusion that extrasensoryresponses are best handled and exploredas forms of conditioned reflexes. Accord-ing to Abrams, the advantages of thisapproach are the ease with which con-scious intervention is eliminated and theopportunity of reinforcing and therebyencouraging extrasensory responses. Theconditioned hypnotic responses employedin these experiments include motoractivities such as clapping hands andhallucinations of taste. The subject in-voluntarily claps hands at the "right"time or he "knows" which of two "iden-tical" cigarettes has been conditioned totaste like toothpaste. The conditioning

"Just my luck to marry a zoologist!"

experiments have been supplemented bya repetition of Soviet research on the tele-pathic induction of hypnosis, studies in

the paranormal transmission of drawings

with Dr Soal's subject, Basil Shackleton,and investigations of the mechanisms ofsubliminal perception. Critics of ESPhave been invited to join in the research

and one exploratory experiment has been

conducted in collaboration with MrHansel. The undergraduate Society forPsychical Research which arose out of

the old (1878) Phantasmagorical Society,

has been closely associated with the work

of the parapsychological laboratory.

A second research group in Oxford,the Psychophysical Research Unit (which

is not connected with the University

although its three members are grad-uates) is planning physiological studies

of ESP and is for the moment engagedin research relating card guessing scores

to image interpretation and personality

measures. They also conducted a masscard guessing experiment on televisionlast year but have not drawn any con-clusions owing to the small number ofresponses (3(H)).

At Cambridge the Society for Researchin Parapsychology is more than a hun-dred years old and its membership nor-mally exceeds a 100. The president. MrE. Garth Moore is a Fellow of CorpusChrist i. Other members include ProfessorC. D. Broad, Dr R. H. Thouless and DrWest. The Perrott Studentship in psychi-cal research at Trinity College is cur-

rently vacant. At present the attention ofthe Cambridge Society is centred on aninvestigation led by Mr Anthony Cornellon the possibility of registering thoughtimpressions on sealed photographicplates. Dr A. G. Owen, a bio-statistician,has carried out card guessing experiments

and an intensive analysis of alleged pol-tergeist hauntings. Experiments in long-distance telepathy are being planned.

In London, Mr George Medhurst, anSPR council member and research scien-tist in industry, has organised and carried

through a large-scale investigation ofcard guessing with 1 200 subjects. Twenty-six subjects obtained highly significantscores in unsupervised tests but no clear-cut evidence of ESP seems to haveemerged in intensive re-testing of thesesubjects under experimental conditions.Dr Alan Gauld of the Psychology De-

partment, Nottingham University is pre-sently engaged in the planning of experi-ments with animals; at Liverpool Uni-versity, Dr Cedric Wilson and MrsPamela Huby have conducted unsuccess-ful experiments, using drugs to influencecard guessing scores. An attempt by DrJohn Beloff and Mr Leonard Evans atQueen's University, Belfast, to measurethe influence of thought on a radioactivesource also ended in failure.

A new date for theearliest Australians

WHEN was Australia first inhabited?Up till now, the question has been

extremely difficult to answer with accur-acy. A radiocarbon date of 10 950 rc+ 170, just announced for an occupationlayer in Kenniff Cave, Central Queens-land, provides the first stratigraphical evi-

dence that man reached Australia beforethe end of the Pleistocene period. Thesample was provided by Dr D. J. Mul-vaney, of Melbourne University, who hasdone much work on the prehistory ofAustralia. The sample was dated at theNational Physical Laboratory at Tcd-dington, England, and the results areannounced in Radiocarbon, which is pub-lished annually by the American Journalof Science,

The dated layer at Kenniff Cave is 6 ft3 in. below the surface and it is underlainby over 3 ft of occupation layers as vetundated. It seems, therefore, that theAustralian aborigine has quite a respect-able antiquity. Another very interestingfact has emerged as a result of these ex-cavations. The lower part of the depositis full of implements whose parallels arcwith Tasmanian rather than mainlandtypes.

The Tasmanians—who became extinctduring the last century'—were quite differ-ent in appearance to the Australian abor-igines. They had a very dark skin, frizzyhair and round skulls like the Negritos.Some anthropologists have suggested thatthey arrived direct from Melanesia ratherthan via the mainland of Australia. Thefinds from Kenniff Cave, however, sug-gest that the first immigrants to Australiawere ancestors of the Tasmanians. whowere pushed out by later waves ofsettlers of the type represented by theAustralian aborigines. The last vestiges ofthese original pioneers may have lingeredon in Tasmania until a century ago.

Copyrighted material

NEW SCIENTIST (No. J49). 2) JULY 1»«3 173

This little girl owes her gaily coloured clothes tothe wonders of chemistry.

Nets made Of Trevtra. make fishing easier for him.

Farbwerke Hoechst was founded in 1863. During the hundred years since then,

chemistry has made life easier and more beautiful. People live longer and the soilyields richer crops

;living has been made more comfortable and people dress better.

In these achievements, Hoechst has played a significant role.

1863-1963THEN

Pa nts were a luxury

Until 1860, man had to make do withnatural co!ouring matter. He had to besatisfied with a handful oi shades, and it

was wel'-nigh impossible to produce fastdyeings. Gay raiments were reserved torthe rich.

Life expectation—fortyThe average expectation of life in 1863was about forty years; infant mortalitywas disastrously high. There were noadequate remedies against infection or

pain.

A starving worldIn 1900 the world population was around1500 million. It was calculated that itwould double in less than fifty years.Where was the food for these hungrymillions to come from?

Nature's limitat'ons

Our ancestors had available only thematerials provided by nature whose appli-cation was limited by their inherent short-comings: iron is heavy, glass may break,wood may rot.

Nature's fibres

In the search for suitable clothing manused the fibres that he tound in nature:wool, cotton, linen and silk. Thesematerials, however, did not fully satisfy

modern trends.

NOW

Gay colours for all

The road from the first aniline dyestuffsproduced by Farbwerke Hoechst io ihewide range of modern dyestuffs encom-passes a long and historic chapier o.research. Today, gay posters, co.our.utextiles and bright clothes are an acceptedfeature ol the daily scene.

Life expectation—seventy

Throughout the world, Hoechst pharma-ceuticals help to fight intection, to mitigate

pain and to maintain health. Many of thesepreparations have become m:les:ones inthe history of medicine.

Fertilizers increase crops

High-grade cultivated planis rob the soii

of important nutrients, but mineral fertili-

zers restore the naturai ba ance. Through-out the world, Hoechst fertilizers and p an.protection agents increase the yield oi

the soil.

Plastics—made to measure

Chemistry created new materials tailoredto the needs of man and combining manyadvantages: plastics supplement tradi-tional materials and open up new vistasin construction and des:gn. They are lighiin weight, durable and do no. corrode.

Man-made fibresman-made fibres are the result of sus-tained attempts to rearrange the building

bricks of nature. Chemists provided thenew fibres with properties that fulfil therequirements of modern man and thatideally supplement those ot the naturalfibres.

people matter most ®FARBWERKE HOECHST AG. FRANKFURT (M) GERMANYHoechst in Great Britain:

Hoechst Chemicals Limited, London, S.W.1Hoechst Pharmaceuticals Limited, London, S.W.1Hoechst-Casseila OyestuRs Limited, Manchester

Co

174 NEW SCIENTIST (No. 34»). 25 JULY 19 6 3

Soviet aims

in astronomy

and space

research

The author, who returned

last week from a tour of

Soviet observatories, sees

important new opportunities

for collaboration with the

Russians in radio

astronomy—making use oftheir splendidly equipped

secret deep-space tracking

station—and perhapseventually in space

exploration as well

by Professor Sir Bernard Lovell,FRS

Director, Nuffield Radio AstronomyLaboratories, Jodrell Bank

DURING the past six years we atJodrell Bank have been able, by means

of the 250-foot radio telescope, to makesome important contributions to thedevelopment of radio astronomy and alsoto render some assistance to both theAmericans and the Russians in trackingtheir deep-space probes. For me, a happyconsequence was an invitation from theSoviet Academy of Sciences to visit radioand optical astronomy observatories in theSoviet Union. Three weeks spent travellingto nine observatories and affording freediscussions with eminent Soviet scientistswould have been exciting enough, even iflhere had not been the added piquancy ofseeing important equipment that has hither-to been bidden from Western eyes. I wasable to work out, with the Soviet Astro-nomical Council, specific schemes forcollaboration between Jodrell Bank andthis secret deep-space tracking station inradio astronomical work. Perhaps of evengreater significance were the indications I

had from the President of the SovietAcademy of Sciences of his wish to promotetalks with the West on the advisability orotherwise of pursuing a programme forlanding a man on the Moon.

Before examining these new opportuni-ties, it is as well to put them in perspectiveby describing what I saw and heard aboutthe present and future activities of theSoviet astronomers themselves. I was par-ticularly struck by the close collaborationbetween optical astronomers, radioastronomers and space researchers that wasin sharp contrast with the distinction

between the three species that is unfor-tunately usual in the West. The Sovietattitude is shown by their use of theirbiggest optical telescopes for photographic

tracking of their space probes.

It is also typified by a model that I saw atPulkovo, the observatory near Leningrad

that is the traditional home of Russianastronomy but has now lost pride of placeto the great observatories of the south. Thismodel was of a much larger version of aradio telescope that exists at Pulkovo con-sisting of 90 plates, arranged in an arc, thatcan be tilted to direct radio waves from aselected region of the sky to a central focus.

The proposed new instrument would have550 plates, each 15 metres by 6 metres,having an effective aperture of 2 kilometres.If it is built, it will be a formidable instru-

ment; and I understand—and this is thepoint I wish to make—that it may be sitedin the Caucasus alongside the greatestproject of the optical astronomers, the

6-metre (236-inch) optical telescope, whichwill be the largest in the world. The firstorders for the latter instrument have beenplaced and the construction of the veryexpensive approach road up the 2000-metremountain chosen for it has begun.

But this community of purpose betweenthe optical and radio astronomers alreadytakes tangible form in the other observa-tories. For example, at the Crimean Astro-physical Observatory important opticalwork on the magnetic fields of sunspots isreinforced by simultaneous radio studiesand, as the new 100-inch optical telescopeis being commissioned, work is proceeding

at a beach site on a 22-metre radio tele-scope to operate at millimetre wavelengths;

it is due to be finished this year.At the Byurakan Astrophysical Observa-

tory in Armenia I saw the extremelyinteresting optical work of B. E. Markarianthat is directly relevant to one of the ques-tions exciting most interest among radioastronomers at the moment: the nuclei ofgalaxies. It has become clear that the verypowerful radio sources formerly attributed

to the collision of galaxies more probablyowe their unique properties to the peculiarnature of their nuclei—as, indeed, the lead-ing Soviet astronomer. Academician VictorAmbartsumian, suggested in 1958. WhatMarkarian has done is to study 400 galaxiesand find that the light from the nuclei of 32of them cannot be explained by emissionfrom stars, so that there is some othermechanism involved, probably "synchro-tron" radiation. Ambartsumian believesthat these galaxies may be less extremeexamples of the peculiar radio galaxies,such as 3C273, that radio astronomers haverecently been studying in detail (see Pro-fessor Fred Hoyle's article. New Scientist,28 March). Markarian uses the 40-inchSchmidt telescope for his work, but a 100-inch telescope is now being ordered for thesame observatory. There is a radio inter-ferometer at Byurakan similar to Ryle"searlier pattern at Cambridge, and a designstudy for a 200-metre steerable telescope—although there is no indication of an earlystart on its construction.

I visited one "pure" radio astronomyobservatory, at Serpuchov near Moscow.There the biggest instrument in service is a25-metre dish, having the unusual featurethat, for its work in recording millimetrewaves from the planets, it is sighted on theplanet by an observer looking through anoptical telescope mounted in the centre ofthe dish. There is also a large "cross"instrument that is not yet complete: itsmain aerial is 40 metres wide and 1 kilo-metre long.

By far the most remarkable radio obser-vatory in the Soviet Union is, however, thedeep-space tracking station in the Crimea.There I saw aerials and electronic equip-

Copyrkjhted material

NEW SCIENTIST (No. 5 49). :5 JLLY 1963 175

merit provided with a lavishness that onedoes not find elsewhere in the Soviet Union.I estimated that the equipment was worthabout £20 million by British standards, and,what was just as remarkable, the wholething was evidently built in a year, in 1960.As few Russians have been able to visit theplace, I felt very privileged at being the

first Westerner to go there.

The primary purpose of the station, andthe reason for its existence, is the tracking

of lunar and planetary probes; it was fromhere that the abortive Venus and Marsprobes were commanded. It belongs to theInstitute of Radiotechnics and Electronics,directed by Academician V. A. Kotelnikov.

There are three identical aerial systemsspaced out over ten kilometres; one is atransmitter and the others are receivers.Each consists of eight 16-metre fully-steer-able dishes arranged in two rows of four,providing the equivalent of a 150-foot

aerial. There is comprehensive equipmentfor working at 920 Mc/s (32-cm wave-length) and at other frequencies. The receiv-ing equipment is superb, making use ofcooled parametric amplifiers and masers,the like of which we shall not have on theJodrell Bunk radio telescope until the endof this year.

In spite of the priority given to deep-

space tracking there is some valuable radioastronomical work in progress. We hadalready heard about the radar echoes ob-tained from Venus, Mars and Mercuryusing these facilities, and the powerfultransmitters, frequency standards, and com-puting equipment, which are all-important

in this work, are outstanding. Radio obser-vations of the occultation of sources bythe Moon, and of the intensities of theemissions from the galaxy M31 and fromthe planets are also in progress.

It was at the instigation of AcademicianM. V. Keldysh. President of the Academy,that I considered what forms of collabora-tion in radio astronomy might be possible,and it was clear that the powerful equip-ment at the deep-space tracking station wasby far the most interesting from this pointof view. In subsequent discussions, three

projects emerged that seemed suitable forcollaboration.

The first is relatively easy to arrange,because it concerns a line of research in

which I am personally engaged and inwhich the Russians are already cooperat-ing. It is the study of "flare" stars, the first

individual visible stars from which radiosignals have been detected. Readers of myarticle on "The discovery of true radiostars" {New Scientist. 25 April) will recallthat this research involves watching

individual stars of a particular type for

optical evidence of flaring and examiningthe radio record for increases above thebackground noise occurring at the sametime. The Smithsonian Institution of theUnited States and the Byurakan Observa-

tory in the USSR have both been helpingme on the optical side—indeed when I metAmbartsumian on my travels he greetedme with news of a flare on the star Ross154 on 28 June; unfortunately it provedto have been below the horizon fromJodrell Bank at the time.

I hope that, as a result of my visit, thisoptical assistance will be extended by otherSoviet observatories. I am also optimisticabout the possibility of arranging simul-taneous radio observations of the flare

stars by Jodrell Bank and the Crimeandeep-space tracking station. There is aspecial scientific interest here: we have asuspicion that radio bursts may originatefrom these stars without a correspondingvisible flare but we can confirm this effectonly by simultaneous observations fromtwo widely spaced stations.

A second collaborative programme thatwe discussed concerns the use of JodrellBank and the deep-space tracking stationas a "bistatic" radar for bouncing pulsesfrom one station off the planets and re-ceiving them at the other—a proceduresimilar to that which we carried out atJodrell Bank in collaboration with theAmericans, for bouncing signals off theMoon. Some modification of equipmentwould be necessary at both stations, but if,as we hope, we can carry out this pro-gramme for Mars, Venus and Mercury weshould be able to check our measurementsof the dimensions of the solar system andobtain new information about the rotationof the planets and about the interplanetarymedium: we may also learn something freshabout the nature of the planetary surfaces.

The third proposal is altogether moredifficult and more ambitious, but theRussians do not think it impossible. Aparticularly successful line of research at

Jodrell Bank during the past few years hasbeen the measurement of the apparent sizesof radio sources in the sky. Such informa-tion provides important clues about the

distance and nature of these sources thatin turn bear crucially upon the interpreta-tion of radio sky-surveys as indications of

the nature of the universe as a whole. These

measurements require at least two radioaerials a considerable distance apart: the

largest baseline we have used at JodrellBank has been 72 miles, using the 250-footdish in conjunction with a smaller aerial

in Lincolnshire; it enabled us to measurediameters down to one second of arc. If thetheoreticians are right in thinking that the

central regions of galaxies responsible for

much of the radio emission are small, it isimportant for us to extend our baseline

and reduce the size of the smallestmeasurable diameter. That is why I raisedwith the Russians the possibility of using

the Crimean deep-space tracking stationfor this purpose: it would give us a base-line of 1600 miles and a 60-fold improve-ment in our angular measurements. But we

shall have to set up a working party toinvestigate the technical problems.

On four occasions the Russians haveasked Jodrell Bank for urgent help inobserving their deep-space probes. It is

possible that, as a result of my visit, weshall get earlier information about theirlaunchings so that we can help them moreeffectively. I offered to accommodate ateam of Russians at Jodrell Bank, similarto American teams we have had workingwith us. and this is being considered.

It was in my discussions wilh AcademicianKeldysh about the Soviet space programmethat the big surprises came. A month ago1 believed, like everyone else in the West,

that the US-Soviet Moon race was a realstruggle. Now 1 seriously doubt it.Keldysh spoke with great enthusiasm of

the plans to establish a manned opticalobservatory within five years, to be put

into orbit at a height of 100 to 150 miles

and to carry a 36-inch optical reflector, anastronomer and an engineer. The immenseadvantage of a telescope in space is. of

course, that it is clear of the disturbances

and absorption of the Earth's atmosphere.The Americans have plans for unmannedorbital telescopes but the Russians intend

to exploit the space rendezvous techniques

that they think they are on the point ofmastering in order to have a mannedobservatory where the crew could workfor spells of five or six days.

There is also enthusiasm for landinginstruments gently on the Moon's surface—and on the planets as well. But when weturned to manned lunar landings, Keldyshput great emphasis on general technical

difficulties of getting the men back aliveand especially on the seemingly insuperabledangers of the radiation from solar flaresthat could quickly kill them. The flareproblem is manageable, the Russians be-lieve, in the case of the orbital observatory

because the few minutes' warning of heavy

radiation that is now possible would besufficient to bring the crew down to a safelevel.

Keldysh told me quite explicitly that hethought that the right way to proceed with

the Man-to-the-Moon problem was to haveinternational agreement among worldscientists about the desirability and value

of a lunar landing. He thought, indeed,that a delineation by scientists of the real

purposes in sending men to the Moonwould be the crucial step in putting space

research on an international basis.

The opinions voiced by Keldysh in thecourse of our discussions have since thenalready been communicated to the Inter-national Astronomical Union by Ambart-sumian. who is President of the Union. Formy part. I have written to Dr Hugh Drydenof the US National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration and to Lord Hailsham.reporting in more detail on this part of myconversations with Keldysh.

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NEW SCIENTIST (No. 349), 23 JULY 196J 177

Engineering design in BritainThe Feilden Committee was appointed in May 1962 to examine the standingof mechanical engineering design in Britain and to recommend anynecessary changes for improvement. Its report was published last week

GRAND old British tradition can runa firm into the ground. The Feilden

Report on mechanical engineering design

gives an example, though it calls it ex-

treme. The North British LocomotiveCompany Ltd, which wound up in l%2,died like a dinosaur from an inability to

adapt to changing conditions. It delayed

so long in turning from the exclusive build-ing of steam locomotives to the building

of dicsels that when it was forced to do soin an effort to keep going it was tod late.Its staff and work people had no experi-ence of precision engineering and were still

"steam-minded". (On the day the report

was published, there were photographs inthe press of the Royal Scot being taken

by road to a holiday camp in Skegness forpermanent exhibition.)The case of North British is quoted in

the section of the Feilden Report dealing

with the present standing of British engin-

eering design. Most of the- evidence givento the Committee pointed out that someparts of industry have failed to keep up

with technological advances in re-design-

ing their products; signficantly they were

all old-established ones making traditionalproducts. To be fair, at least some of thepresent trouble has arisen because these

industries have made successful productsin the past— good, reliable machines—andas customers preferred to buy what they

knew to be good when they wanted newones, it is not difficult to understand whydesign development on them has been

more or less a matter of tinkering. Besides,bright engineers and designers wanted to

get into the new industries after the war,and there was an immense market fortraditionally designed British goods.

This state of affairs is now at an end.The Federation of British Industries state-ment to the Committee, while payingtribute to the present standing and reputa-

tion of British engineering design as

"generally good" nevertheless went on tosay that "if Britain is to conquer the pro-portion of a competitive world engineering

market necessary to maintain our standard

of living, quite drastic alterations will beneeded to the present arrangements".

From the outset, the Feilden Committeewere determined not to start sliding into

aesthetics. In the event they did not have

to. They found, apparently, that when theywere discussing appearance they werereally talking about engineering values for

the most part. So some of the words

Members of the Committee

G. B. R. Feilden, FRS (Chairman).Davy-Ashmore Limited.

S. H. Grvlls,Rolls-Royce Limited.

M. C. de Malhlrbp,Imperial College of Science andTechnology.

Professor O. A. Saunders, FRS,Past President of the Institution ofMechanical Engineers.

The Hon. Penelope K.Pilri y (Secre-tary).

Department of Scientific and Indus-trial Research.

Co-opted members: B. K. Blount,Department of Scientific and Indus-trial Research; F. D. Penny, NationalEngineering Laboratory.

applied to British engineering products

turned dut to mean that there was a lackof knowledge of the properties ofmaterials, poor detailing and no thoughtof how the machines were going to bemaintained or operated conveniently. Thewords, quoted in the report, were shorter—"lumpish", "rough", poorly-finished",and "old-fashioned", At least someof the customers now think the same.British exports of engineering products

have been increasing, but they have

not been increasing at the rate that

the international trade is, the net result

being that Britain"s share has shrunk.

It seems extraordinary that firms arestill being caught out for lack of design

staffs who appreciate a changing world.Some of them have still not mentallyaccepted the end of the war as a fact andare producing goods to pre-war designs.What borders on the incredible is thatBritish design in the newer fields of tech-nology may be just as bad. Equipment formilitary aircraft, because its design does

not take advantage of up to date know-ledge of materials and fabrication, is sounreliable that maintaining it accounts for

half the total cost of the Royal Air Force.However, there is not much point in

examining the present situation simply toraise eyebrows. The more important partof the report is aimed at changing the atti-tude of our society to engineers and ofindustry to engineering designers.

Many other professions are thought tobe higher in the social scale than engineer-

ing. The Feilden Report quotes a survey

made at the University College of SouthWales and Monmouthshire, this time withthe general public, which bears out theresults of a previous survey made by theOxford University Department of Educa-tion among sixth form schoolboys. In alist of ten occupations, rated by status, theprofessional engineer came seventh afterdoctor, solicitor, university lecturer, re-search physicist, company director, dentistand chartered accountant.

In industry, firms often do not know thedifference between a draughtsman and adesigner. People practising other profes-sions than that of the engineer are paidmore. Even when engineers are highlypaid, few of them are employed on design.In fact, it is clear from the report thatlarge sections of industry have no idea ofwhat they want designers to be or do andthere is confusion at educational level.The consequence of these factors and

others is that there are not nearly enoughschool leavers going into engineering andmost of those who do get into managementor research jobs as fast as they can. Fewof them take up design as a career.There are fourteen recommendations for

action in the report. The list starts offwith two general ones which concern im-pressing the engineering industry with theimportance of design and the encourage-ment of talented engineers to make it theircareer on the one hand and getting acrossto the public the value of engineering inthe national economy and the urgent needfor more engineering designers on theother. It says that membership require-ments for professional institutions mightbe altered to give more prominence to de-sign qualifications. Many of the otherrecommendations are concerned witheducation and training. They include thearrangement of experiments in teachingdesign at undergraduate and post graduatelevels, the reorganisation of the practical

training of engineers with more emphasison modern production methods and theinfluence of design and establishing insti-tutes for advanced studies in design in closecollaboration with industry as well as ahigher degree in engineering design. De-velopment contracts—some of which havebeen awarded by DSIR- should be usedto encourage the creation of high quality

design teams. These measures and theothers put forward will take time, but areading of the report leaves no doubt thatthere is no time to lose.

Copyrighted material

178 NEW SCIENTIST (No. 349). 25 JULY 19*3

Why do we still getfatigue failures?

The breaking of materials under repeated applications

of a load is a problem that is inherently complicated

and research results can give only partial assistance to

designers. Lack of attention to detail in either

design or production must, however, be blamed for

many catastrophic failures that occur

by C. E. Phillips and N. E. FrostMaterials Group, National Engineering Laboratory

MANY important breakdowns ofplant and machinery which occur in

service are caused by the fatigue failure of

a metal part. As the phenomenon of metalfatigue has been known for over a hun-dred years and studied seriously for nearly

half this time, it is pertinent, in view of the

recently published Feilden Committee

report on Engineering Design, to seek

reasons for the continued occurrence of

such failures.

The term "fatigue failure" refers to thebreaking (or sometimes to the cracking) of

a material by the repeated applications of

a load; the material may be in the form of acomplex structure, a machine componentor merely a laboratory test specimen. Theload which will cause failure when appliedmany limes is much less than that requiredif applied only once, and is generally in-

sufficient to produce visible distortion. Theconditions under which material operates

in service vary widely, and the frequency

of the alternating component of load canbe greater than 100 000 cycles per second

or as low as once or twice per day. These

wide differences arc evemplihed by a com-pressor blade vibrating at its natural fre-

quency, the connecting-rods of a car

engine, a railway bridge and an aircraft

.a bin which is pressurised during flight.

A metal, when machined and polished,is considered to have a fatigue strength

that is an intrinsic property readily deter-

mined by laboratory experiment. The ex-perimental techniques involved are rather

more complex than those used for deter-mining the common static strength proper-ties of yield strength and tensile strength.

For instance, because fatigue failure gener-

ally starts on the surface of the material

(as will be discussed later) the effect of the

metallurgical and mechanical condition of

The Feilden Report on Engineering Designnotes that the National Engineering Labor-atory finds that neglect of fatigue is thebasic cause of more than three-quarters ofthe failures in ser/ice that are referred to it.

the surface is very pronounced; it is there-fore essential that all specimens of a batchused to determine fatigue properties havecomparable surfaces. Only the alternatingcomponent of a load leads to the initiationof a surface fatigue crack, and most avail-able fatigue data have been accumulatedunder conditions of simple alternating load—that is, with zero mean load. However,fatigue performance can. where necessary,be determined under conditions of alter-nating bending, tension, torsion, or a com-bination of such loads, with or without amean load, at normal or elevated tempera-ture, at various speeds of load application,

in air or a corrosive atmosphere, and witha particular surface condition related tothe service requirements.

The intrinsic fatigue properties of amaterial arc obtained experimentally froma batch of identical specimens used toestimate the greatest stress-range that canbe withstood with a negligible risk offailure occurring during an infinite num-ber of cycles of stress, or such a numberas represents a useful life of a particular

component. For some materials there isa limiting stress range called the "fatigue

limit" which will not cause failure howevermany times it is applied: other materialsmerely show a marked increase in thenumber of stress-cycles necessary to causefatigue as the stress-range is decreased.

What happens when a cyclic stresscauses a metal to fail? A brief and simpli-fied answer is the following. Metallo-

graphic examination shows that fatiguedamage usually begins in certain favour-ably oriented metal grains at a free surface(hence the importance of the precise con-dition of the surface —whether "as-forged",machined, polished, corroded, cold-rolled,etc.); relative movements occur within suchsurface grains and, after a comparativelyshort time, these sliding movements pro-duce local surface roughening which be-comes more accentuated as the number ofapplied stress cycles increases. The nuclea-tion of minute surface grooves and fissures,or "micro-cracks", can be regarded simplyas a continuation of this roughening pro-cess, and some adjacent micro-cracks even-tually join together to form one largercrack which grows across the sectionto cause complete failure. Whilst the for-mation of surface micro-cracks arises fromshearing effects of the applied stress, the

growth of a macroscopic crack dependsupon repeated opening and closing. Inspecial circumstances, cracks may growfrom sub-surface inclusions or defects but,in the majority of cases, failure starts in

the surface grains of a material. A surfacecrack can usually form and grow under theinfluence of a cyclic stress which is insuffi-cient to give rise to general plastic defor-

mation, and therefore fatigue stressesusually result in a failure which has anoverall appearance of brittleness.

Unfortunately, from the designers view-point, the number of variables to be con-sidered when the question of fatiguestrength arises is large: the fatigue proper-

tics of all materials of engineering interest

under all possible combinations of stresssystems, surface finish, surface condition,

heat-treatment, temperature, environment

and speed of application of stress cyclesarc not and never will be available, and hemust therefore estimate the particularfatigue performance he happens to he con-sidering from whatever data there is tohand. Moreover, the intrinsic fatigue pro-perties of a material provide him with onlygeneral guidance to the fatigue strength of

a solid component and often have littlerelationship to the fatigue strength of a

joint or structure made of the material. Itis reasonable to assume that he can pro-

duce a satisfactory and efficient design for

a component of uniform section whichhas to withstand fatigue loading provided

that :

(a) the intrinsic fatigue properties of

the material in the required size andcondition arc known with a sufficientbackground of information to indicatethe variation in performance that is

likely to occur between one componentand another;

lb) the precise dynamic stresses to bewithstood arc known. This is rarelv thecase as dynamic stresses can be caused

by many influences unknown to the de-signer vibration of nearby plant and

Copyrighted material

NEW SCIENTIST (No 3 4 9 ). 25 JULY 1963 179

exceptional operating conditions are

examples:

(c) the dynamic stress cycles involvedarc of constant amplitude. However, thespectrum of loads to be endured almost

always consists of stress cycles of vary-

ing amplitude and there is not, at pre-

sent, any precise method for relatingfatigue performance under such condi-

tions to results of tests at constant stress

amplitudes. To ensure that fatigue crack-ing will never occur, the best that the

designer can do at present, unless exten-sive testing has been carried out under

conditions corresponding to the service

conditions, is to see that the maximumof the various stress amplitudes never

exceeds the intrinsic fatigue strength of

the material.

(d) the effect on the fatigue strength

of the material of the precise environ-

ment in which the component is tooperate is known. It has been amplydemonstrated that small changes in en-

vironmental condilions. particularly if

they are slightly corrosive, can have very

marked effects on fatigue performance.So we see that, even for the simplest of

design problems, difficulties can arise

which cannot be readily resolved. But very

few components are of uniform shape;most contain discontinuities, in the form

of changes of cross-section, grooves, welds,

holes, etc.. and any form of joint consti-

tutes a most serious kind of discontinuity.

Indeed, of all fatigue failures which occur

in practice, most result from fatigue cracks

originating at a discontinuity of one sort

or another, and lack of attention to detail

design in such regions is the greatest single

factor responsible for the failures. Theuse of a general safety margin on the static

strength of a material to guard against the

effect of unknown high local stresses andunknown loading conditions is often satis-factory when the design only has to with-stand static loads, but it is generally proved

quite unsuitable when fatigue loading isinvolved. Moreover, even when a compon-ent has been adequately designed, it mayfail in service without any reflection on the

designer, because of unsatisfactory manu-

facture -for example, machining marks

left on a highly stressed component, or a

generally rough surface finish. Well-pro-

portioned curves shown on working draw-

ings do not always appear as such on the

finished article, and inspection of such

components before they pass into service

is all too frequently related only to dimen-

sions and functional behaviour: the ques-tion of whether or no! its fatigue Strength

has been seriously reduced by unsuitable

machining or altered production methods

is overlooked.

Nowadays, experienced designers aremostly aware that violent changes of

cross-section should be avoided whenever

possible because they give rise to high local

Fatigue fracture in the web of an engine crankshaft originating at the junction of theweb and the journal.

stresses that assume paramount impor-tance under fatigue conditions. Changes ofcross-section are obviously unavoidable,

however, and although a vast amount ofresearch has been spent on determining thefatigue properties of materials machined tocontain various forms of discontinuities

(holes, rounded notches, sharp notches,

grooves) these data from laboratory tests

are only of limited assistance to a designer.

The extent to which a discontinuity orchange of section gives rise to a high localstress can be demonstrated mathematically

in a few simple cases: special techniques,especiall) that of photo-elasticity, in which

transparent plastic models reveal stresses

by their effects on polarised light, can be

used to evaluate other cases by direct ex-perimentation. The existence of a highlocal stress does not necessarily cause a

serious loss of strength under steady load

conditions because, for the normally duc-

tile engineering materials. local plastic de-

formation can be tolerated. Failure willnot occur unless the stress is high enoughto cause deformation right across the sec-tion. But. when the loading is of a cyclicnature, fatigue cracks will form when thelocal stress amplitude is just greater than

the intrinsic fatigue limit of the material—usually less than half the tensile strength.

At this stress level, the bulk of the materialis still elastic, and elastic stress theory canbe used to evaluate the maximum localstress amplitudes occurring.

So, in designing a component to with-stand fatigue loading, it is necessary toassess the value of the local stress intensi-

fication in the vicinity of important changesof section. But, when this assessment hasbeen made, information in the literatureon the effects of high local stresses onfatigue performance cannot always bedirectly applied. Much laboratory test in-

Co atonal

180 NEW SCIFVTKT (No J 4 9 l 2 5 JULY 1063

Why do we still get fatigue failures ? continued

formation purports to show that localstresses higher than the intrinsic fatigue

limit can be tolerated without fracture

occurring, and much effort has been ex-pended in attempts to establish relation-

ships which would enable a designer topredict the performance of untested

shapes. Many of these relationships are ofdoubtful value to the designer, and can be

misleading where the local stress intensifi-

cation is particularly severe for. in such

cases, small cracks can form although they

may not propagate to cause completefailure under the application of fatigue

stresses of constant amplitude. The exis-tence of such small cracks would not. in

general, be acceptable to a designer, be-

cause under service conditions occasional

high loads might well cause them to grow.Studies of fatigue crack growth show-

that, under simple conditions, the rale of

growth is proportional to the crack length

(/) and the cube of the alternating stress((t) and that there is a limiting value of

NEW SCIENTIST (No. 149). 2i JULY 1963 181

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182 NEW SCIENTIST (No. 3 A 9). 25 JULY 1963

Nature's other greens

Apart from chlorophyll, which dominates the natural

scene, there are several other green pigments.

The structure of one of them, xylindein, produced

by a fungus that grows on dead wood, has

recently been elucidated ; it turns out to be

quite different from that of chlorophyll

by Dr G. Ivf. Blackburn

University Chemical Laboratory, Cambridge

This article deals with a subject dis-

cussed at the International Congress

of Pure and Applied Chemistry inLondon that ended last week. Apaper entitled "The structure ofxylindein," by G. M. Blackburn, A. H.Neilson and Lord Todd, was presented

by Dr Blackburn.

THE abundance of the chlorophylls, thegreen leaf-pigment of plants, is so over-

whelming that it almost becomes excusable

to suppose that they uniquely provide green

colour in nature. It is not so. Nature has

other green pigm