Abstract
THE twenty-five year period of King George's reign includes almost the entire history of the study of cosmic rays. The presence of these rays was revealed by a series of experiments carried on between 1909 and 1914. Wulf, on the Eiffel Tower, and Gockel, flying in a balloon to 4,500 metres, found that rays from radioactive sources in the ground could not account for the ionisation observed at high altitudes, and suspected some radioactive material in the upper atmosphere1. Hess, in a series of notable balloon flights, found an actual increase of ionisation with increasing altitude, and concluded “that a radiation of very high penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above”. These experiments were at first criticised by other investigators, but were quickly confirmed by the more precise observations of Kolhörster, and have since been found correct in all their essentials.
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References
Detailed reviews of cosmic ray research, with comprehensive bibliographies, have recently been published by A. Corlin (Annals of the University of Lund, No. 4; 1934) and E. Steinke (Ergeb. exakt. Naturwiss., 13, 89; 1934). I shall here give references only to some of the very recent work not discussed by these authors.
A. H. Compton and R. J. Stephenson, Phys. Rev., 45, 441; 1934.
A. H. Compton, Proc. Phys. Soc. London, April 1935.
Compare especially T. H. Johnson, Phys. Rev., in press.
A. H. Compton and I. A. Getting, Phys. Rev., in press.
V. F. Hess and R. Steinmaurer, Sitzber. Preuss. Ak. Wist., 15; 1933.
Compare, for example, A. H. Compton, NATURE, 134, 1006; 1934. Similar estimates have previously been published by W. Kolhorster and E. Steinke
E. A. Milne, NATURE, 135, 183; 1934.
For example, C. D. Anderson, Proceedings International Conference on Physics, 1934.
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COMPTON, A. Cosmic Rays. Nature 135, 695–698 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135695a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135695a0