Word: compton
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...this point Arthur Holly Compton, already a crowned king of terrestrial radiation, leaped into the cosmic quest. He had an impatient desire to collect a mass of far-flung recordings with the greatest possible speed. Eight cooperating expeditions were to measure the rays in Greenland, Denmark, India, Ceylon, Java, Tibet, South Africa, Eritrea, Spitsbergen, Switzerland. One man was to make records from Peru around the Cape of Good Hope to the U. S. Two Compton men were killed trying to scale Mt. McKinley in Alaska. Dr. Compton himself, with his wife and elder son, set out on a cosmic search...
Retreat. At this stage the problem reached the midwinter convention of the A. A. A. S. at Atlantic City in 1932, which both Nobel Laureates attended. For a time the two seemed on the verge of noisy dispute (TIME, Jan. 9, 1933). Dr. Compton had found charged particles with energies of 30,000,000,000 volts, which could hardly be secondary rays dislodged from the air. Dr. Millikan said that anyone recording voltages over a billion must have muffed the technique...
...should receive a few more rays than the back of the planet, just as a child riding a carousel in the rain should be struck by more drops in front than in back. This small daily variation in the cosmic rays has actually been observed, so Dr. Compton agrees they must come from the remotest depths of space. What is their scientific importance? 1) A cosmic ray impact led to the discovery of the positive electron, a fundamental particle of matter. 2) The geographic distribution of the rays facilitates study of Earth's magnetic field. 3) For laboratory work...
Controversy Closed. Dr. Millikan was among the packed throng which heard Dr. Compton last week in St. Louis. He did not rise, when the speaker had finished, to challenge his conclusions or even to ask a question. Impartial observers were therefore ready to write off their classic controversy as closed, to call it a cosmic clearance. If Dr. Millikan still cherishes the conviction that most of the cosmic rays are photons, he stands almost alone. Three years ago he remarked that if he ever wanted to change his mind, he hoped he would not be pilloried. He has not been...
Elephant Toes. When Arthur Compton was 10 he wrote a monograph on why some elephants are three-toed, others five-toed, explaining why he found his view at variance with that of other authorities. His mother concealed her amusement. When she recalled the incident with a smile many years later, her famed son replied: "Mother, if you had laughed at me then you would have killed my interest in research...