The ionosphere |
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In 1901, Marconi received Morse-code signals on Cape Cod from a huge spark transmitting system at Poldhu in Cornwall, England. It worked!, but Marconi, and others, could not understand why the 'Hertzian waves' traveled that far around the curvature of the Earth. In 1902 Oliver Heaviside, an eccentric independent physicist living near Torquay, proposed an explanation, predicting the existence of a conducting layer in the upper atmosphere that was reflecting the waves - (like the reflection from metal surfaces inside a modern microwave oven).  Three layers of ionization (the ionosphere) are created each day by UV and X-ray emissions from the Sun. |