Science: Sky Waves

From the depths of space—too deep to be reached by astronomers' light-telescopes—mysterious bodies continually bombard the earth with radio waves. No one knows much about these tuneless, codeless, cosmic broadcasts, but the National Bureau of Standards hopes to find out more. Last week, at Sterling, Va., 40 miles from Washington, Standards was building a radio observatory to study the waves and their origin. In charge of the observatory is young (35) Grote Reber, who broke into radio astronomy by developing a hobby.

Reber read about the sky waves some ten years ago while he was working as a radio engineer...