The Charge Spectrum of Very Heavy Cosmic Ray Nuclei

Large areas of photographic emulsion have been flown on balloons, at small atmospheric depths, in order to record tracks of relativistic highly charged nuclei of the cosmic radiation. Sixty tracks due to relativistic nuclei with Z > 40 have been found and the resulting charge spectrum is presente...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and physical sciences Mathematical and physical sciences, 1970-07, Vol.318 (1532), p.1-43
Main Authors: Fowler, Peter Howard, Clapham, V. M., Cowen, V. G., Kidd, J. M., Moses, R. T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charge density
Cosmic rays
Density
Electrons
Emulsions
Energy
Heavy nuclei
Optical density
Particle density
Silver
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Large areas of photographic emulsion have been flown on balloons, at small atmospheric depths, in order to record tracks of relativistic highly charged nuclei of the cosmic radiation. Sixty tracks due to relativistic nuclei with Z > 40 have been found and the resulting charge spectrum is presented. One nucleus with Z > 90 penetrated the detector, indicating a lower flux of extremely heavy nuclei than was suggested by the previous experiment (Fowler, Adams, Cowen & Kidd 1967). The observed structure in the charge spectrum again suggests that nuclei of the cosmic radiation have been synthesized by the process of rapid neutron capture. Detailed consideration is given to the fundamental assumptions made in the interpretation of the measurements and assignment of the charges.
ISSN:1364-5021
0080-4630
1471-2946
2053-9169
DOI:10.1098/rspa.1970.0132