| Description | Was glad to hear of his new job, and asks how it is going.
Gold understands that Westerhout is tackllng seriously the Earth-dynamical problems with radio interferometry. Gold is enclosing the 1967 discussions of this, 'Science' reprints by Gordon MacDonald and himself, the first mention of the possibility of VLBI. Gold remembers he tried to introduce the beginning of radio interferometry already at the Royal Greenwich Observatory when he was Chief Assistant there, but the then incoming Astronomer Royal (R R Woolley) threw this out as absolutely absurd. Now, finally, it will be done.
Gold believes that the possibility of monitoring the angular velocity of the Earth and learning to recognize the variations due to the atmosphere will be very important for atmospheric sciences. The angular momentum of the atmosphere cannot otherwise be determined, but it has a long time constant of relaxation, and may turn out to be related to long-term weather trends. |