GEOLOGIST LEET CALLS A-BOMB SEISMOLOGISTS' DIVINING ROD

To the statesmen of the UNO the atomic bomb is something of a headache, but to L. Don Leet, associate professor of Geology, it is just a divining rod. According to observations he made at the original trial of the bomb in the New Mexican Desert, released to the press last week, the atomic bomb will be useful not only for Japanese slum clearance and the disposal of the USS New York but also in finding oil and plotting earthquakes. Leet, who makes a hobby of collecting earthquakes, revealed that the atomic bomb added something new to seismology that has heretofore been missing in ordinary earth rumblings. "Until the bomb observations," Leet explained, we were more or less working in the dark on one particular type of earthquake: the direct vertical shock."

He made it clear that some theoretical study had been completed on perpendicular biasts before Army engineers atomized their 200 ft. electrical tower in August. But since nothing of sufficient magnitude could be artificially created, it was impossible to secure ideal control and observational conditions.

Hence the whole line of investigation was solely speculative, and "table-top seismology" with pencil and paper Leet admitted was very uncertain. It was not that the scientists were unable to make a beginning and to define the problem in physical and mathematical terms, but the actual test proved as much a surprise to them as it turned out later for Japanese Imperial Headquarters.

For as soon after the blast as anyone was sufficiently composed to consult the seismograph, the investigators discovered the presence of an entirely new wave which no one had heretofore expected from even the most scrupulous of predictions. Leet christened the new wave the "hydrodynamic wave" because of its similarity to the motion of a ripple on an aqueous surface.

The implications of this discovery are great, Leet emphasized. It will prove useful in modern mineral prospecting by the painless method of remote control, a vast improvement over the "pick, pan, and pray" system employed during the Yukon and 1849 gold rushes.

Actually, even with all the modern improvements and extensions of the pickaxe, oil drilling was a rather precarious venture until this discovery. Contour mapping and geological surveys of suspected petroleum areas have led to reasonably good results, but the tremendous investment required to drill an oil well made a miss really a mile. Leet predicted that his discovery would take a great deal of the gamble out of the oil business.