COSMIC RAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

COSMIC RAYS.

A PERPETUAL BOMBARDMENT BIRTH STRUGGLES OF MATTER. The nature of the mysterious, invisible cosmic rays perpetually bombarding the earth from outer space, some so powerful they will penetrate eighteen feet of lead, is cloee to a solution, their discoverer, Professor Robert A. Millikan, of the California Institute of Technology, reveals in the annual report of the Smithsonian Institution.

They are, he believes, the birth struggles of matter itself being created in the form of atoms in the vast spaces ■between the stars, later to become new stars.

While many still believe that they are the result of forces let loose in the disintegration of matter, it is pointed out by ■ Professor Millikan and his associate, G. H. Cameron, they aie so much more powerful than the sti ongest rays produced by radio-active processes, the gamma rays of radium, that anothei explanation is necessary. The rays, it is pointed out, strike the earth with equal intensity from all directions, night and day. Thus it is obvious that their principle source k not the sun, afl' probably would be the case if they were due to the disintegration of matter.

On the other hand, Professor Millikan points out, evidence obtained with the spectroscope shows that free positive and negative electrons exist in great quantities, but very loosely diffused, in space itself where there is complete absence at In some manner not understood they are pushed together into hydtogen atoms which in turn combine into such elements as helium, oxygen, silicon and iron. In this process the electrons lose some of their masses, •thus releasing the cosmic ray energy. The force, of gravity, £)r. Millikan says, then pulls the atoms together into stars, .where, under enormous temperatures and pressures, some of them are disintegrated again, providing the source of the star's heat.

But this line of reasoning, Dr. Mlllikan eays, forces one to complete the cycle of the birth, death and rebirth of matter, the radiant heat sent forth from the star forming in some way into positive and negative electrons again and undergoing owe mor«;-th«.^ame'process into atoms, " - \ ,