Science: Earth's Electric Ring

High above the earth's atmosphere, 6,000 to 11,000 miles above its surface, whirls a great ring of invisible gas. This is the belief of Geophysicist Sydney Chapman, formerly of Oxford. He cannot prove conclusively that the ring is there, but strong theoretical reasons have convinced him that it exists.

The ring is not made of dust particles like the rings of Saturn; it consists of hydrogen whose atoms have been ionized, i.e., broken into protons and electrons. The ring as a whole is electrically neutral since the amounts of positive protons and negative electrons are about equal, but the protons (for complicated reasons connected with their greater mass) move faster. This makes the ring, in effect, a current of positive electricity flowing around the earth.

According to Chapman's theory, the ring of gas (thinner than the "vacuum" in radio tubes) is formed by the action of the earth's magnetic field on streams of ionized hydrogen that blast out of the sun. As the protons and electrons from the sun approach the earth, they are deflected away from it by magnetic forces. Some of them settle into a ring above the earth's magnetic equator.* Eventually, they escape, curving down to the atmosphere to cause certain kinds of auroras. Their departure weakens the ring current, but it is soon restored by new particles from the sun.

Dr. Chapman, who is president of the International Central Organizing Commission for the International Geophysical Year (a worldwide UNESCO enterprise) is now at the State University of Iowa, where study of the upper atmosphere is an important specialty. He hopes that the varied information about the earth that is now being gathered by 35 nations, including the U.S.S.R., will verify his theories about the earth's ring. To understand it better will help in dealing with the magnetic storms that mess up communications. When and if space flight comes, says Dr. Chapman, the ionized ring can be studied at close hand, but he does not think that it will bother a spaceship that passes through it.