Probing the Sky [Book Review

Abstract

Probing the Sky with Radio Waves: From Wireless Technology to the Development of Atmospheric Science, by Chen-Pang Yeang, reads like a suspense novel. Yet it represents a masterpiece of philosophical and historical significance, displaying intimate knowledge of the technical and scientific subject matter. Probing the Sky with Radio Waves leads us from Heinrich Hertz?s discovery of the propagation of centimeter length waves in 1888 and Guglielmo Marconi?s transatlantic high frequency radio transmissions in 1901, to the discovery of Earth?s ionosphere and the remote exploration of the ionosphere with radio waves in the 20th century. The explosive expansion of ?wireless? communication from these early days to our time warrants this intimate look at the initially slow development of wireless radio, the engineers and inventors and the radio amateurs advancing the technology, and the physicists and mathematicians on all continents who developed the theories of radio wave propagation in an atmosphere that is partially ?ionized? by solar ultraviolet and X-ray radiation: the ionosphere. Engineers, especially, and students in the frontier technology and research of space weather exploration will greatly value finding the origins of their research tools and methods in this excellent history. Application of the Humboldtian approach: ?comprehensive and extensive fieldwork, careful preparation for expeditions, meticulous collection of data? turned natural history into modern field theory. Yeang reports on the often diverging efforts of individuals and teams of scientists, mainly in Europe and the United States, who tried to explain how radio waves can propagate over large distances in a then widely unknown medium, the atmosphere/ionosphere, in the presence of a conductive boundary, the earth?s surface.