SEMIDIURNAL CHANGES IN BAROMETRIC PRESSURE
The weight of the atmosphere is constantly changing as the changing barometric pressure indicates. Low pressure areas are not necessarily encircled by high pressure belts. The semidiurnal changes in barometric pressure are not explainable by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and the heat effect of solar radiation. The cause of these variations is unknown.
“It has been known now for two and a half centuries, that there are more or less daily variations in the height of the barometer, culminating in two maxima and two minima during the course of 24 hours. The same observation has been made and puzzled over at every station at which pressure records were kept and studied, but without success in finding for it the complete physical explanation. In speaking of the diurnal and semidiurnal variations of the barometer, Lord Rayleigh says: ‘The relative magnitude of the latter [semidiurnal variations], as observed at most parts of the earth’s surface, is still a mystery, all the attempted explanations being illusory.’”
One maximum is at 10 a.m., the other at 10 p.m.; the two minima are at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. The heating effect of the sun can explain neither the time when the maxima appear nor the time of the minima of these semidiurnal variations. If the pressure becomes lower without the air becoming lighter through a lateral expansion due to heat, this must mean that the same mass of air gravitates with changing force at different hours.
The lowest pressure is near the equator, in the belt of the doldrums. Yet the troposphere is highest at the equator, being on the average about 18 km. high there; it is lower in the moderate latitudes, and only 6 km. high above the ground at the poles.
GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE DO NOT OBEY AN ATTRACTIVE GRAVITATIONAL LAW
The ingredients of the air—oxygen, nitrogen, argon and other gases—though not in a compound but in a mixture, are found in equal proportions at various levels of the atmosphere despite great differences in specific weights. The explanation accepted in science is this: “Swift winds keep the gases thoroughly mixed, so that except for water-vapor the composition of the atmosphere is the same throughout the troposphere to a high degree of approximation.” This explanation cannot be true. If it were true, then the moment the wind subsides, the nitrogen should stream upward, and the oxygen should drop, preceded by the argon. If winds are caused by a difference in weight between warm and cold air, the difference in weight between heavy gases high in the atmosphere and light gases at the lower levels should create storms, which would subside only after they had carried each gas to its natural place in accordance with its gravity or specific weight. But nothing of the kind happens.
When some aviators expressed the belief that “pockets of noxious gas” are in the air, the scientists replied:
“There are no ‘pockets of noxious gas.’ No single gas, and no other likely mixture of gases, has, at ordinary temperatures and pressures, the same density as atmospheric air. Therefore, a pocket of foreign gas in that atmosphere would almost certainly either bob up like a balloon, or sink like a stone in water.”
Why, then, do not the atmospheric gases separate and stay apart in accordance with the specific gravities?
Ozone, though heavier than oxygen, is absent in the lower layers of the atmosphere, is present in the upper layers, and is not subject to the “mixing effect of the wind.” The presence of ozone high in the atmosphere suggests that oxygen must be still higher: “As oxygen is less dense than ozone, it will tend to rise to even greater heights.” Nowhere is it asked why ozone does not descend of its own weight or at least why it is not mixed by the wind with other gases.