COSMIC RAY RESEARCH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 222, 19 September 1934, Page 8

COSMIC RAY RESEARCH

WORLD-WIDE OBSERVATIONS. INSTRUMENT FOR AUCKLAND. The largest cosmic ray meter ever built has been tested successfully by Professor Ralph D. Bennett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Mount Evans, Colorado. The instfniment is the first of seven designed to record the intensity of the rays continuously and automatically for five years without attention. When completed five of these machines will be stationed for five years in New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, Greenland and Maryland, United States, while the others will bo moved about to various locations for shorter periods. Professor P. W. Burbidge, professor of physics at Auckland University College, commented yesterday that it was proposed to have the instrument intended for New Zealand stationed at Auckland, but exactly where it would be situated or when it would arrive from America was not yet known.

The instrument would be used in accordance with an arrangement with the Carnegie Institute. The matter of studying the influence of cosmic rays had been subject to a great deal of research in the past few years, and New Zealand had been one of the countries considered as a suitable place for the situation of a cosmic ray meter. The instrument concerned would be built in Chicago, and the professor had had the privilege of observing the construction of the meter now completed when he was in the American city last January.

The purpose of the instruments, he added, was to record the variation at the same times in distant parts of the world of the influence of the rays. It

was recognised that the measurements should be taken by exactly similar instruments. A matter of importance was whether the variations were similar all over the globe, and there was also the question of the amount of variation. It was important to know whether the sun had any effect.

A brief description of the instrument concerned was that 1 it consisted of two concentric spheres with a filling of lead shot, making a screen through which any radio-active rays could not penetrate. The cosmic rays, however, could penetrate the layer of lead, about 15in. thick. In the centre of the lead would be a small chamber containing argon gas compressed to a pressure of 7501 b to the square inch. This gas would be slightly conducting for electricity, and the electric current through the gas would be measured.

A report from America states that the apparatus has an automatic photographic recording device, and it is compensated for changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure.