CHARTING OF PACIFIC COSMIC RAYS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 28 March 1936, Page 3

CHARTING OF PACIFIC COSMIC RAYS

METER PLACED ON AORANGI RESEARCH BY PROFESSOR A. 11. j COMPTON Apparatus for determining the intensity of eosmisrays has been placed on the after deck of the Candiau-Aus-tralian-New Zealand liner Aorangi for Professor Arthur 11. Compton, professor of physics at the University of Chicago, 1 who visited New Zealand in 1932 to ’conduct a series of experiments here into the characteristics of these rays. This cosmic ray meter is one of seven hieing set up at a strategic points ! throughout the world. One has already been erected at Christchurch, which is the nearest practicable elevated land to the south magnetic pole, and another in Peru, on the magnetic equator. Tiic others arc to bo installed in Greenland, which is the nearest place possible to tlie north magnetic pole, in Mexico, and in the 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 year to record the variations of cosmic rays between Vancouver and New Zealand. To cheek the workings gf the ! meter, Professor Compton travelled as I far as Honolulu by the Aorangi, which

! left Vancouver for Auckland and Svd- | nev on 30th January. His intention I was to await the return of the Aorangi J to Honolulu oil the northward trip on I 13th March, 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 oflead and copper, leaving it active only to the cosmic rays. The apparatus, which weighs more than 400011), 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 of cosmic rays will take place over a period of eleven years, the sunspot cycle, as a result- cf which it is hoped 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 dote imiile which hemisphere of the earth receives the highest proportion of the ■ rays.