Word: krauses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When the radio beeps of Sputnik I died away in late October, most of the world's Sputnik watchers, official and unofficial, lost track of it. But not Engineer-Astronomer John Daniel Kraus, professor of electrical engineering at Ohio State University, who worked out a clever system of his own for watching beepless Sputniks. Last week Professor Kraus asserted that he had observed the disintegration and presumptive death of Sputnik...
...free Sputnik detector, Dr. Kraus, 47, uses the 20-megacycle radio time signal sent out 24 hours a day by the National Bureau of Standards' station WWV near Washington, D.C. In daytime the signal reflects strongly from the ionosphere, but at night the ionosphere is less effective, so the signal gets much weaker. When a small meteor streaks across the sky, it leaves behind it a trail of ionized air that acts as a small reflector. The ionized air increases the strength of the Washington time signals for a couple of seconds...
...Kraus was familiar with this effect, so when Sputnik I took to space, he went after it, antenna pointing like a hunter zeroing in on a duck. The satellite, moving at near meteor speed, and much bigger than common meteors, performed magnificently, leaving an ionized trail at each night passage. The trail reflected the time signal strongly for as much as a minute. The bursts of reflected waves came from just the right places and at just the right times to fit the satellite's slowly shifting orbit...
...Venusian atmosphere. The only waves that reach outer space are those that travel vertically and are therefore reflected less strongly. In effect, a broad beam of radio waves sweeps around Venus as the planet revolves. Only when the beam points toward the earth is it detected by Dr. Kraus. So the time between the peaks of energy gives Venus' period of rotation...
...Kraus does not claim to know what the mysterious sources may be. He suspects that they are thunderstorms. He has no idea why they seem to be concentrated on one side of the planet. When the reason for this lopsidedness (a continent? ocean? mountains?) has been deduced, it will be the first information gathered by man about the Venusian surface...