The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1937-08-05
Keeping Up
Wh!l6Seienfe
&Ss1"%S 2erse
Cosmic Rays Man
Finds on Earth Are
Trapped in Galaxy
They May Originate in
Blast of Stellar Worlds

New York. = A Nobel prize
winner in physics and a Chinese
scientist joined forces, through
the printed word, here to tell
the world of a new hypothesis
on the origin of the cosmic ray.
The men are Prof. Arthur H.
Compton, University of Chica-
go, and DR.. P. Y. Chou, physi-
cist at National Using Hua uni
versity, Peiping, China. Their
medium of expression was the
highly technical journal of the
American Physical society, the
Physical Review, published
here.
In the present stage of CO.'S
mic ray knowledge, say Prof
fessor Compton and DR.. Chou,
there is no known act of ma
ture-even the humiliation of the
atomic nucleus-which can provide
sufficient energy to fit the observed
energies of some of the cosmic
rays.
The only possibility, they feel, is
the primeval explosion that sent
worlds and galaxies literally rock
ing and Keeling into space.
Acknowledge Belgian's Theory.
Every kind of particle and the
packets of energy known as photons
would be the debris of such stag
gering catastrophe, they admit. To
account for the known preponder-
anee of electrically charged par
ticles, they suggest that the nom
charged photons and neutrons have
been lost in space because they could
penetrate the magnetic field of stars
and galaxies. But these same mag
netic fields might trap the charged
particles and so produce the OBJ
served particle component of the
cosmic rays.
The scientists acknowledge h e
expanding universe theory of Able
LeMaitre, he Belgian scientist
priest, as the inspiration for
this newest cosmic ray origin
hypothesis. The Compton-Chou
report is the first one in con-
siderable time which has tack
led the origin of the cosmic ray.
For some years scientists have been
content to study and obtain more
and more experimental data, leav-
ing the fitting together of the pieces
to later time.
Discussing the high energy of cos
mic rays and their apparent origin
somewhere out in space, the scien-
lists said, eff the cosmic rays come
from beyond the Milky Way, at a
really typical place in intergalactic
space the density of cosmic-ray en-
ergy would be of the order of 100
times as great as that of starlight.
1t is thus apparent that either the
source of the rays must be radia-
tor which is very powerful compared
with stars as a source of light, or
the cosmic rays once emitted must
be retained by the metagalactic
system instead of being lost as is
starlight.
May Defect Rays.
although nuclear processes &C.
curing in interstellar space might
result in an adequate total energy"
they add, sit appears that such
processes are inadequate to account
for the great energies of the individ-
ual cosmic-ray particles"
Concerning the trapping of the
electrical particles they ask, SIS it
possible that electrically charged
rays emitted by the initial explosion
may be DETECTED by stellar or ga
Tactic magnetic fields just as a cos
mic-ray electron is detected by the
earth's magnetic field? If so, those
particle which would be most prob
ably retained by the metagalactic
system would be those with the
highest ratio of charge to mass in
order, electrons, protons, ETC.,
whereas all neutral rays might be
forever lost"
Because, on the hypothesis, the
cosmic rays would spend much of
their life time in intergalactic space
they should suffer the "red shift"
decay of energy in the same way
that light does. eff this is true"
conclude the scientists, "the en-
ergies of the cosmic rays now strik-
ing the earth must be much less