Word: cosmic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...amount of valuable information. Even on the clearest day, the atmosphere is as opaque to many kinds of radiation as if it were an ocean of ink. But the satellite, soaring above the atmosphere, can measure all kinds of radiation, including the sun's ultraviolet and the primary cosmic rays. Its electrical eyes, looking downward, can scan the earth, following masses of cloud as they form and drift. Other instruments can measure the electrified particles that stream...
...several years scientists from the University of Iowa have been launching rockets from high-flying balloons to study cosmic rays at great altitudes. The advantage is that the rocket avoids most of the resistance of the atmosphere. A Deacon rocket, for instance, rises only about 15 miles when fired from the ground. When launched from a balloon twelve miles up, it has reached 60 miles...
...knows yet where cosmic ray particles come from. A few may originate in rare solar "flares," but most of them come from farther space. The fastest particles pack an enormous punch, up to 1016 ev (10 million billion electron volts) of energy. To accelerate a flea to this speed, said Neher, would require all the energy released by a hydrogen bomb...
...latest expedition, results were different. There were more cosmic rays, and among them were feeble particles with only 150 mev (150 million electron volts...
...years before. He believes that this thin stuff, mostly hydrogen, drifts in enormous, tenuous clouds through the solar system. Each cloud carries its own magnetic field, and when the clouds are numerous, they fill the solar system with magnetic obstacles in the path of the cosmic rays. The weak ones cannot make the grade. They curve off into space and never reach the inner region where the earth revolves...