From the January 30, 1932, issue
By Science News
MONTE ALBAN TREASURE MAY SET JEWELRY STYLE
The proud inhabitants of Oaxaca, in whose vicinity the Mixtec treasure tomb was found, think they are going to set the worlds jewelry styles. A casual glance at the ornaments and trinkets reveals that archaeology has already influenced modern jewelers.
One of the most beautiful objects found in the Mixtec tomb of Monte Alban is a carved and filigreed breast ornament of gold. The human head with its enormous headdress represents a tiger knight, Senor Case, discoverer of the tomb, said. The fierce gold fangs of the animal are bared. Among the ancient Mixtecs, Aztecs, and other Mexican Indian groups, there were orders of knighthood, as there were in contemporary medieval Europe. Most famous were the tiger and the eagle knights. These American knights wore masks of the symbolic animal of their order, and the mans head protruded from between the animals jaws.
BEAM RADIO MAY RESULT IN SIGNALS SENT TO MARS
Inhabitants of Earth are a step nearer successful communication with neighbors on Mars (if any!) and other nearby planets following the recent development of ultra-short-wave-beam radio.
This is the belief of Dr. I.E. Mouromtseff, research engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, who has been directing the output from a short-wave transmitter as if it were the beam of a searchlight, sending it from the top of one building here to the roof of another more than a mile away.
The energy that can be concentrated into a narrow radio beam is sufficient to pierce the Kennelly-Heaviside layer in the outer atmosphere, which reflects back to Earth the longer waves in common use, Dr. Mouromtseff thinks.
It is conceivable, he stated, that the power we have succeeded in getting into our 42-centimenter beam is sufficient to pierce the Kennelly-Heaviside layer and travel the 35,000,000 miles to Mars. It is possible that such small power may carry such great distances because practically all the intervening space is a high vacuum and does not absorb the waves once they get through the Earths atmosphere.
EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES TO BE STUDIED AT BOTTOM OF SEA
Earthquakes and volcanic disturbances in islands off the southeast coast of the United States promise to become less mysterious to scientists following an international expedition to this region, which began to leave American ports this week.
Because the Caribbean is a region where ocean deeps and intervening submerged mountain chains have been active during recent geological ages in creating and submerging islands, geologists have sought the clues that might better explain how continents were once connected by land bridges. The additional knowledge of a part of these islands and their surrounding waters that will result from the expedition may help explain how South America and Africa or Africa and India were once joined by land.
The studies that are expected to be of greatest value to seismologists and volcanologists will be made by new echo-sounding apparatus on the U.S. submarine S-48 and by the improved Meinesz gravity-measuring apparatus, which will be operated by its inventor, Dr. A.F. Vening Meinesz, of Holland. Prof. Richard M. Field of Princeton University is the director of the expedition.