sensitive that they are now detecting traveling waves in the ionosphere, and there is some question whether we saw a meteor shower last summer. I haven't heard meteor showers mentioned in connection with sampling, and whether the fission products played out of them. This would be investigated, I presume. I didn't hear the Argus shots and their fission diffusion discussed; if they have been traced, at that altitude it is unique. For the very distant shots, my own personal feeling is that there will tend to be a charged particle input at the auroral regions, but, as Welch pointed out, there is plenty of research there. cations. This would influence the network lo- We would probably count on the aid of fission products to beat the background. you can "R and D"' chemical samples. I don't know how fast You have to optimize to take advantage of getting samples as young as possible, but you can't rush yourself so much that you defeat your purpose. Again, we certainly would like to have all the details we can get into cryogenic collecting, so that it would be possible to do much analytical work on the shot. Floor: We can do a lot of research and originate ideas as to what we think might happen if somebody ever did fire one of these missiled things at a point 1000 miles away, but is there ever any discussion about jointly or unilaterally shooting a couple of devices to check our research? Dr. Tucker: Yes, they are hoping to do it underground. Everybody would like to do it at the various levels and alti- tudes; it is a question of getting political permission. several of them, to really cinch these arguments. It certainly implies that a high-low yield can be fired, or If the underground test program goes through, I should think this would make the political climate more agreeable to a few more Argus-type yields. Floor: Is nuclear testing at these ranges practical? You would be interested in information on a test program that is still out of range of detection. Dr. Tucker: It is easy to telemeter back. The Senate investigation of these techniques is already very much involved in electromagnetic pulses which look like lightning. If you have some indication from some other technique that a shot went off, then you can look over your EM things and you can find indication of it. Another thing, if you know the circulation well, you can get the fission, fix the date of firing, and, knowing circulation, you can establish where. Dr. Shreve: I don't think background can be overemphasized because, in any of these systems, the false alarm rate that you can tolerate is essentially zero, or perhaps one in 10 or 20 years. Dr. Tucker: The false alarms they talk about for Vela systems are one in 100 years. 171-172