Listening to the movements of the Earth: The Gulf of Eilat, Israel is getting wider at the rate of half a centimetre each year. This is one of the facts which has been proved by the Weizmann Institute's Geophysical Observatory near Eilat. The Observatory, dedicated recently in the name of Brazilian publisher Adelpho Bloch, who put up a million dollars to build and equip it, is fascinating to scientist and layman alike. Situated in the ''Lost Valley'', a narrow canyon between sandstone and granite peaks some 15 kilometres north of Eilat, is a series of tunnels cut into the heart of a solid granite rock whose peak reaches 150 metres into the sky, and whose base is estimated to ba as much as 30 kilometres deep into the earth. Dr. Ari Ben Menahm, who has held the Sam and Ayala Zacks Chair of Geophycis at the Weizmann Institute since 1966 and studied under one of the founding fathers of seismology, Prof. Benno Cutenberg, at the California Institute if Technology made no false claim to modesty when he said this observatory is among the foremost to such stations in the world. A heavy steel door cut into the side of the mountain keeps the world out door cut into the side of the mountain keeps the world out and guards the secrets of this space-age Aladdin's cave. Within the tunnel, whose walls and roof are lined with rough - sprayed concrete to prevent rockfalls, de-humidifuers air conditioners hum. Photo shows Prof. Ari Ben-Menahem near the Magnetometer at the cave. This machine can register even slight tremors, hunderds of kilometres deep in the earth.
Photo measures 7.25 x 9.5 inches.
Photo is dated --0000.
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