Word: linsley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...central laboratory, they are scintillometers set out to watch for enormously powerful cosmic rays that smack into atoms in the high atmosphere and, as a result of the crash, spray the earth's surface with millions of subatomic particles. Despite the minute size of his quarry, Physicist John Linsley of M.I.T., who operates the ray trap, reported a tremendous catch: a shower of 50 billion particles...
According to Linsley's calculations, the primary ray that caused all the ruckus must have had 100 billion billion electron-volts of energy-three billion times the power of man's biggest atom smashers. If the cosmic-ray invader consisted of only one proton, as Linsley believes, its fierce energy must have made it weigh 100 billion times as much as a normal earthly proton...
...Linsley believes that his fat proton must have come from some turbulent galaxy in far-distant space, where great forces exist that could give it the energy that it carried to earth. In the past, cosmic-ray scientists have only speculated about such turbulent galaxies, but radio astronomers have recently found a host of likely candidates. They seem to have blown up in some mysterious way and are giving off vast amounts of radio waves (TIME, Dec. 14). Dr. Linsley suspects that his fat proton may have got its speed and energy in one of these enormous explosions that involved...
Computer Gives Up. There, late one night four weeks ago. Dr. Linsley was studying a pile of computer reports from Kirtland. He came to the Dec. 3 shower. The report started like many others, but toward the end the computer wrote in effect: "I give up." Linsley said to his wife, "I see something crazy," and went to work with his slide rule. Half an hour later he telephoned his colleague, Dr. Livio Scarsi: "I think we may have something...
Next morning the shower caught by Record No. 026508 went back to the Kirtland computer for a special full-dress analysis. Next day Dr. Linsley got the exciting news. The shower peppered the ground with io billion particles, and when it hit the atmosphere, it carried 20 to 40 billion billion electron volts. This made it by far the most powerful ray ever detected. Its energy, far above the critical limit, proved that it must have come from outside the Milky Way galaxy. Very likely it had been traveling for billions of years, pushed by unknown forces from an unknown...