From what in Leningrad corresponds to Washington's U. S. Bureau of Standards, last week came a method of determining where lightning is apt to strike. A bolt jumps from a cloud to earth when the atmospheric electrical tension becomes stronger than the resistance of the air between. The air resistance depends upon its ionization, and the ionization—Professor L. N. Bogoiavlensky assumes—depends on buried radioactive rocks and the electro-conductivity of the earth above. Hence he and his assistants go about with meters to register such radio-activity and electro-conductivity.
Where the meters show a level...