CHARTING OF PACIFIC COSMIC RAYS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 149, 19 March 1936, Page 10

CHARTING OF PACIFIC COSMIC RAYS

Meter Placed on Aoirangi

RESEARCH BY PROFESSOR A. 11. COMPTON

Apparatus for determining tiie intensity of cosmic rays has been placed on tiie after deck of the C'anaditiu Australasian liner Aorangi for Professor Arthur H. Compton, professor of physics at the University of Chicago, who visited New Zealand in 1932 to conduct a series of experiments here into tiie characteristics of these rays. This cosmic ray meter is one of seven being set up at strategic points throughout the world. One lias already been erected at-Christchurch, which is the nearest practicable elevated land to the south magnetic pole, ■ ami another in Peru, on the magnetic equator. The others are to be installed in Greenland, which is the nearest place possible to the north magnetic pole, in Mexico, and in tiie Rockies, probably in Colorado.

The meter was- set up on, the Aorangi when the ship was at Vancouver at the end of January, and the present arrangements are to leave it there for a vear to record the variations of cosmic rays between Vancouver . and New Zealand. To check the workings of the meter, Professor Compton travelled as -far as Honolulu by the Aorangi, which left Vancouver for Auckland and Sydney on January 30. His intention was. to await the return of the Aorangi to Honolulu on the northward trip on March 13, and if the results of the experiments conducted during the voyage across the- Pacific proved satisfactory to return to Vancouver. . . The delicate mechanism comprising the meter is insulated from surrounding radiations by successive layers ot lead and copper, leaving it active only to the cosmic rays. The apparatus, which weighs more than -40001 b., contains argon, which when struck by the rays becomes intensified and indicates the intensity of its charge on a sensitive electroscope. The series of experiments to determine the intensity ot cosmic rays will take place over a period of eleven years, the sunspot cycle as a result of which it is hopect to find what time variations there are in cosmic rays and what rules govern them. By the measurements taken aboard the Aorangi it is- hoped -to determine which hemisphere of the eartli receives the highest proportion of the