Word: cosmical
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...whole galaxy of cosmic ray experts gathered last week at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, to honor Nobel Prizeman Dr. Robert A. Millikan, 80, principal discoverer and namer of cosmic rays. Dr. Millikan, who was spry enough last summer to travel by station wagon from Texas to Canada observing cosmic rays, described the gathering as "a testimonial to my longevity and a kind of celebration of my passage through the portal leading into second childhood...
...Millikan still sticks to his original long-held theory that cosmic rays come from the "annihilation of matter" (atoms turning into energy) somewhere out in space. He has elaborate evidence to prove his theory. The gathered cosmic raymen did not try to argue with their dean; neither did they agree with him. Cosmic rays are a baffling and complex phenomenon. In spite of years of concentrated work, the experts do not even agree about what they are, much less about what causes them...
...average of over 100 cosmic particles of some sort pass through every human head every minute, according to Millikan, but they cannot be felt. Elaborate special apparatus is needed to observe them. Some scientists work with stacks of Geiger tubes, which register each particle that passes through them. Others use special photographic plates, where certain particles leave microscopic tracks of silver in the sensitive emulsion. The best instrument, and the hardest to use, is the Wilson cloud chamber, where the particles make visible tracks of white condensed moisture...
...powerful magnetic field. But sunspots, which are whirling solar hurricanes, have magnetic fields of their own. Sometimes these cancel the sun's general field, making a narrow, nonmagnetic tunnel through which the particles escape. Dr. Forbush claimed to have observed sudden increases of cosmic radiation when such a tunnel happened to point toward the earth...
...once part of a planet that blew up, and it came from the planet's stony crust but contained traces of the metallic core. A sample was air-expressed at once to the Institute before its radioactivity could diminish much. What it told about its life with the cosmic rays the Institute isn't saying in public...