Evening star., 1934-10-11
MARYLAND TO GET
COSM|C RAY POST.
First Permanent 0bserva-
tory to Be Established
at CheItenham.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

The first permanent cosmic ray OBJ
servatory in the United States soon
will set up at the Coast and Geodetic
Survey Magnetic Observation Station
at Cheltenham, Md, Is miles from
Washington.
This was announced at large gath
ering Of Washington scientists and
Coast Survey officials at Cheltenham
yesterday afternoon when the 33d an
niversary of the station, the oldest in
the country in continuous service, was
observed.
The Maryland observatory will form
one of a network of cosmic ray sta
tions to be established over the world
under the direction of Prof Arthur
H. Compton of the University of Chi
cago. The project is to be financed
by grant from the Carnegie Corp.
of New York. Present plans call for
one other American station, at Mount
Wilson, Calf, and seven or eight
others distributed over the rest of the
world.
Plan Long Program.
These stations will undertake long
continued program of observations,
which, it is hoped, will shed some new
light on the nature and origin of
these mysterious rays which, night and
day, are bombarding the earth from
outer space, and concerning which
there have been some lively scientific
controversies during the past few years.
These rays, which might be described
as super X-rays, the most penetrating
of which will go through a foot of
lead, have been the object of world
wide investigations during the past
few years, when they have been recog-
nized as having a fundamental bear
ing on the most vital problems of as
tronomy and physics.
A concentrated effort has been made
to determine their variations with
time and place. If this intensity in
creased with latitude, for example,
it would indicate that they are mega
lively charged electrical particles be-
ing drawn toward the magnetic poles
of the earth. If they were much more
intense during the day than night
| it would indicate a solar, rather than
coSmic, origin. Actually the findings
have been quite complicated and diff
cult to interpret, since there appears
to be two or three sorts of cosmic
rays.
The observations have been taken,
for the most part, with portable in
struments, from high mountain tops,
grees of latitude, but for the most
| nv-f InAr !, Nf I.,-fA
Will Record Automatically.
At the Cheltenham observatory per-
manent apparatus-built upon the
general principle of the Geiger counter,
but with layers of heavy lead balls
instead of sheets of lead to screen out
radiation of lower wave length-will
be installed and the intensity of the
cosmic radiation recorded automat-
ically "a hours a day over a period of
years. With these records it will be
possible to interpret the variations by
valid statistical procedure. It will be
possible to determine whether the in
tenSity varies in some cyclic fashion,
as does terrestrial magnetism; whether
there Is any orderly change with time,
or whether the variations are purely
spasmodic and not susceptible to any
orderly Interpretation.
Once a tabular arrangement of the
variations can be made over any con-
siderable period there will be efforts
to find relationships between these
variations and other terrestrial and
astronomical phenomena. At present
the cosmic ray appears to be related
to nothing known to man.
The Cheltenham Observatory, whose
Anniversary was observed yesterday,