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Show Photos Taken Mile in Air Show Minerals ITHACA, N. Y. A Cornell Uni-' versity professor has developed a new way of prospecting by looking at air photos taken from a mile or two in the air. The method can be used for diamonds, dia-monds, uranium, gold, tin, iron, lead, or oil. From Cornell University's airplane air-plane photos of about a third of the land of the entire earth, Prof. D. J. Belcher of the civil engineering engineer-ing school developed the clues for air prospecting. The discovery is the outgrowth of World War II when Belcher wrote General MacArthur's staff suggesting suggest-ing what they could discover by looking more closely at aerial photos. pho-tos. He was instructed to catch the next plane. Buried Pipes Show Up Some clues are almost incredible. Drainage pipes, buried underground, under-ground, and not visible when you walk over them, show as thin white lines. The earth is a little drier directly di-rectly above them. This causes a slight change in color of vegetation, which shows white. White spots the size of pin points in the Midwest were identified as ant holes. For several feet around each hole the ants track the vegetation vege-tation enough to change the color. Gold deposits have been discovered discov-ered on photos by earthquake faults, iron by a slight change in colors of leaves. Air prospecting for oil is widespread. Around uranium deposits there is usually colored earth, mainly yellow. yel-low. On the photos this shows white. Diamonds are found in "pipes." These are circular deposits of blue clay about 2 miles in diameter, extending ex-tending deep down. Prospectors run plow furrows looking for clay, but this requires years. The vegetation on top of a blue-clay pipe is different differ-ent enough to reveal the circular formation. Sand Can Be Seen The size of grains of sand may be "seen." An example is dunes, having hav-ing what looks like long, gray fingers fin-gers streaming inland. The winds blowing inland have stripped away the fine sand, leaving coarser stuff in ridges which reveal their presence pres-ence by whiter color. These fingers show sand which automobiles cannot cross, but tractors trac-tors can. Farther inland are likely to be signs of clay, which automo-bles automo-bles can cross but which clog tractor trac-tor treads. Belcher says anyone can learn to read the photos. There are about 30 main formations. These repeat all over the world. The land forms around Cornell repeat in Nova Scotia Sco-tia and Switzerland; those of central cen-tral Arizona in Iran, Australia, and Africa. The volcanic soils of the Aleutians repeat in Korea and Japan. Ja-pan. The main formations divide into hundreds of others which can be identified and interpreted. |