Solar influences on the cosmic ray intensity at high elevations

✍ Scribed by S.A. Korff

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1940
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 335 KB
• Volume: 229
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(40)90910-3

✦ Synopsis

Instrument carrying balloon flights using the radio-cosmic-ray technique have been made during the day and the night, to investigate the amount of the diurnal variation at high altitudes. It was found that the effect, if any, is smaller than the experimental error of two per cent., and is estimated to be about I. 5 per cent. of the radiation at these levels. This permits a definite upper limit to be set to any contribution of solar origin to the ionization at levels up to o.3 meters of water equivalent below the top of the atmosphere, which could be produced by photons in that spectral region to which mass-absorption laws apply, namely X-radiation. The magnitude of the effect is in agreement with the view advanced by Vallarta, that a magnetic field on the sun would produce a small diurnal change in the intensity of the softer portion of the cosmic ray intensity.