Cosmic ray
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Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. The composition includes electrons, protons, gamma rays, and atomic nuclei from a large region of the periodic table. The kinetic energies of these particles span over fourteen orders of magnitude, with the flux of cosmic rays on the Earth's surface falling approximately as the inverse cube of the energy. The wide variety of particle energies is reflected in the wide variety of sources. Cosmic rays originate from energetic processes on the Sun all the way to the farthest reaches of the visible universe.
Cosmic rays can be conceptually broken into different kinds:
Cosmic rays can have energies up to 1020 eV 1
History of cosmic rays
Cosmic rays, also known as cosmic particles, were initially believed to originate in radioactive isotopes in the ground. This theory was disproven in 1911 by Victor Hess, who in 1936 received the Nobel prize in physics for his work. Hess used electroscope measurements taken at different altitudes from a hot air balloon to conclude that the radiation was cosmic in origin. Hess further showed that the sun could not be the primary source of cosmic rays by taking balloon measurements during a 1912 solar eclipse.
In 1938, Pierre Auger observed near-simultaneous cosmic ray events at widely separated locations. He concluded that they were due to incident particles whose energy was too high to penetrate the atmosphere. Such particles instead collide with nuclei in the atmosphere, initiating a particle cascade known as a cosmic ray air shower. The events Auger had observed were found to have energies of 1015 eV, 10 million times higher than had previously been known.
The measurement of high-energy cosmic rays via sampling of extended air showers was first implemented in 1954 at the Harvard College Observatory. From their work, and from the many ground-array experiments that followed it, the cosmic ray spectrum is now known to extend up to at least 1020 eV.
Cosmic rays have been implicated in the triggering of electrical breakdown in lightning. It is now considered likely [see Gurevich and Zybin, Physics Today, May 2005, "Runaway Breakdown and the Mysteries of Lightning"] that essentially all lightning is triggered through a relativistic process, "runaway breakdown", seeded by cosmic ray secondaries. Subsequent development of the lightning discharge then occurs through "conventional breakdown" mechanisms.
Cosmic Rays And Fiction
Cosmic rays have been used as a catchall, mostly in comics (notably the Marvel Comics group the Fantastic Four), as a source for mutation and therefore the powers gained by being bombarded with them.
References
- Pierre Auger Observatory: the largest cosmic ray observatory in the world, in Argentina, with a twin coming in Colorado
- 1 Introduction to Geomagnetically Trapped Radiation by Martin Walt 1994
- Cosmic Rays by A. M. Hillas, 1972 Pergamon Press, Oxford. A good overview of the history and science of cosmic ray research including reprints of seminal papers by Hess, Anderson, Auger and others.
- Cosmic Rays by B. Rossi, 1964 McGraw-Hill, New York.ca:Raig còsmic
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