COSMIC RAY MYSTERY

Opunake Times, 19 August 1932, Page 3

COSMIC RAY MYSTERY

PICCARD'S NEW QUEST. Professor Piccard, the Belgian physicist, who last summer ascended to a height of nearly ten miles in a specially constructed balloon and neary lost his life when the balloon came down on a Swiss glaciler, is preparing for another simiar venture, in the hope of solving the mystery of the cosmic rays. This timo he has planned to study these puzzling phenomena in the stratosphere, the outer layer of the atmosphere which begins about ten kilometres above the earth, where the barometer falls to very low levels and the temperature is always many degrees below zero. He will be confined in a hermetically closed metal designed to protect him from the low temperatures and atmospheric pressure, and in addition to scientific instruments he will this time take wireless equipment, by means of which he can communicate his position to co-workers below. The existance oi the cosmic rays was first demonstraaed by Lord Rutherford more than twenty years ago, who found that the rate of leakage of an electroscope was reduced Jvvhen surrounded by lead screens. At first it was suggested that this was due to very penetrating electro-magnet-ic rays originating in the radium in the earth. Later, by .investigations some three miles above the earth, and particidjarly hy professor Millikan of California, who in the Andes it was discovered that the mystery rays originated outside the earth, and that while X-rays can penetrate barely half an inch of lead, the cosmic rays could pass through 17ft of lead before being absorbed. 'd Another scientist recently put forward the startling discovery that cancer and the cosmic rays are associated. In times past, he suggested, the cosmic rays were more and sto'mulated the human body to resist disease. The progressive increase of cancer, he added, may probably be due to the progressive weakening of the cosmic rays as a controlling factor on the [human body.

So Prof. Piccard will try to solve the mystery of these rays by investigating their nature where they are not effective, in the Stratosphere, and after an experiment ascent in Swizterland he will take his baloon to the North of Canada, inside the Artie circle, as the frigid region of the atmosphere. It is a venture full of danger, but if he succeeds he will almost certainly add to our knowledge of these marvellously small rays, the wavelength of which is so minute that thousands of millions measure less than an inch, and which are endowed with powers of penetration possessed by no other known eleetero-magtnetiA rays. And, if Prof* Millikan is right, the universe, instead of disintegrating, is continually being recreated" by their agency.