Giant balloon to study cosmic rays

• Book ID: 104134088
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1959
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 69 KB
• Volume: 268
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(59)90415-6

✦ Synopsis

Branch, Air Force Missile Development Center, carried a gondola with about 100 pounds of scientific apparatus and was designed to reach an altitude of about 100,000 ft. The instruments, developed jointly by RIAS (a research division of The Martin Company located near Baltimore, Md.) and the Air Force Cambridge Research Center (Bedford, Mass.), are designed to measure only a small portion of the cosmic particles which strike the gondola--the so-called "heavy nuclei."

Since "primary" cosmic rays disintegrate when they collide with atoms of gas in the Earth's atmosphere, producing and transferring their energy to "secondary" cosmic particles, a balloon at this altitude is expected to encounter both primary and secondary radiation. Both will be detected, but a unique device developed by RIAS will distinguish between the two by noting the change in velocity as particles pass through a beryllium plate and record them separately. Findings are radioed back to Earth.

Most of the particles in cosmic rays are the nuclei of hydrogen atoms origi-