Under-lce Mountains

The Soviet Arctic Research Institute reported last week that it had mapped the bottom of the frozen Arctic Ocean. Main feature: a mountain range up to 10,000 ft. high that runs submerged from northern Greenland to the New Siberian Islands (see map). The Soviet scientists named it the Lomonosov Range in honor of Russian Poet-Scientist Mikhail Vassi-lievich Lomonosov.-

Much of the rest of the Arctic Sea's bottom is mountainous too. The Russians said that earth folds run across it from eastern Siberia to Ellesmere Island, north of Canada. They did not say how they got this information; presumably they did it by echo-sounding through the Arctic ice or through holes cut in it.

The Russians claimed to have gathered much information on water and air move ments in the Arctic regions and on irregularities in the earth's magnetic field. Near Siberia, they said, the magnetic meridians are gathered into almost parallel bundles that point across the Arctic Ocean toward the magnetic pole in northern Canada. Magnetic meridians normally converge like geographical meridians.

The findings of the U.S. Navy's Hydrographic Office, which has also been studying the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, remain secret.

* Circa 1711-65. Professor of chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg, he wrote important poetry and reformed the Russian language, making it for the first time an effective literary medium.

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