Do energetic heavy nuclei penetrate deeply into Earth's atmosphere?
- 1 January 1980
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 77 (1) , 44-48
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.77.1.44
Abstract
We calculate the expected fluxes of cosmic ray nuclei with charge 5 </= Z </= 28 at various depths in the earth's atmosphere, taking into account the initial charge distribution, ionization loss, and various modes of fragmentation. The flux of surviving heavy nuclei is too low by a factor approximately 10(-10) to account for the ultra-high-energy Centauro events. We describe an experiment to search for highly ionizing particles that may or may not be nuclei.Keywords
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