Study of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers With the Method of Coincident Bursts in Two Unshielded Ionization Chambers

1945 ◽  
Vol 67 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 228-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd G. Lewis
1949 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 184
Author(s):  
CBO Mohr

The structure of cosmic ray air showers at sea-level has been studied by an investigation of the burst rate frequency and the transition effect in lead, for cosmic ray bursts occurring simultaneously in two high-pressure ionization chambers with varying separation. Although extensive showers were responsible for all the coincidences observed with the larger chamber separations, they accounted for less than 3 per cent, of the bursts observed with a single chamber. Of the remaining 97 per cent., somewhat more than one-half appear to be due to nuclear disintegrations and the rest either to narrow showers of approximate radius 30 cm. or to the core of an extensive shower of low density. The extensive shower frequency was about 10 times that predicted by theory. The bearing of these results on present views of the origin and development of air showers is discussed.


1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 730-735
Author(s):  
H. S. Green

The theoretical analyses of the extensive air showers developing from the cosmic radiation has its origins in the work of Carlson and Oppenheimer (1937) and Bhabha and Heitler (1937), at a time when it was thought that such showers were initiated by electrons. The realization that protons and other nuclei were the primary particles led to a reformulation of the theory by Heitler and Janossy (1949), Messel and Green (1952) and others, in which the production of energetic pions and the three-dimensional development of air showers were accounted for. But as the soft (electromagnetic) component of the cosmic radiation is the most prominent feature of air showers at sea level, there has been a sustained interest in the theory of this component. Most of the more recent work, such as that by Butcher and Messel (1960) and Thielheim and Zöllner (1972) has relied on computer simulation; but this method has disadvantages in terms of accuracy and presentation of results, especially where a simultaneous analysis of the development of air showers in terms of several physical variables is required. This is so for instance when the time of arrival is one of the variables. Moyal (1956) played an important part in the analytical formulation of a stochastic theory of cosmic ray showers, with time as an explicit variable, and it is essentially this approach which will be adopted in the following. The actual distribution of arrival times is cosmic ray showers, for which results are obtained, is of current experimental interest (McDonald, Clay and Prescott (1977)).


Universe ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Góra

The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a project dedicated to global studies of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, the cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE), beyond the capabilities of existing detectors and observatories. Up to date, cosmic-ray research has been focused on detecting single air showers, while the search for ensembles of cosmic-rays, which may overspread a significant fraction of the Earth, is a scientific terra incognita. Instead of developing and commissioning a completely new global detector infrastructure, CREDO proposes approaching the global cosmic-ray analysis objectives with all types of available detectors, from professional to pocket size, merged into a worldwide network. With such a network it is possible to search for evidences of correlated cosmic-ray ensembles. One of the observables that can be investigated in CREDO is a number of spatially isolated events collected in a small time window which could shed light on fundamental physics issues. The CREDO mission and strategy requires active engagement of a large number of participants, also non-experts, who will contribute to the project by using common electronic devices (e.g., smartphones). In this note, the status and perspectives of the project are presented.


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