Page Content (OCR)
113 It seems obvious that both the planes and the bases were being observed, and in some cases photographed by remote-control units or manned space ships. Although I thought it improbable that the location of our uranium deposits would be of interest to space men, a Washington official told me it would be relatively simple to detect the ore areas with airborne instruments. "The Geological Survey has already developed special Geiger counters for planes," he told me. "They had a little trouble from cosmic-ray noise. They finally had to cover the Geigers with lead shields. Whenever an important amount of radiation is present in the ground, the plane crew gets a signal, and they spot the place on their map. It's a quick way of locating valuable deposits." "Mind you," he said, "I'm not completely sold on the interplanetary answer. But assuming it's correct that we're being observed, I can think of a stronger reason {p. 133} than fear of some distant attack. Some atomic scientists say that a super-atomic bomb, or several set off at once, could knock the earth out of its orbit. It sounds fantastic, but so is the A-bomb. It's just possible that some solar-planet race discovered the dangers long ago. They would have good reason to worry if they found we were on that same track. There may be some other atomic weapon we don't suspect, even worse than the A-bomb, one that could destroy the earth and seriously affect other planets." At the time, I thought this was just idle speculation. But since then, several atomic scientists have confirmed this official's suggestion. One of these was Dr. Paul Elliott, a nuclear physicist who worked on the A-bomb during the war. According to Dr. Elliott, if several hydrogen bombs were exploded simultaneously at a high altitude, it could speed up the earth's rotation or change its orbit. He based his statement on the rate of energy the earth receives from the sun, a rate equal to some four pounds of hydrogen exploded every second. Still other atomic scientists have said that H- bomb explosions might even knock a large chunk out of the earth, with unpredictable en Poe results. A dramatic picture of what might happen if the earth were forced far out of its orbit is indicated in the much-discussed book Worlds in Collision, by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, recently published by Macmillan. After many years of research, Dr. Velikovsky presents strong evidence that the planet Venus, when still a comet resulting from eruption from a larger planet, moved erratically about the sky and violently disturbed both the earth and Mars. When I told him what I had in mind, he suggested an angle I had not considered.