CXXIII. Time variations of extensive air showers and the origin of cosmic rays

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
An experiment is described in which sixteen Geiger counters each of area 200 cm2 arranged on a square lattice of 54 m pitch were used in coincidence to count showers of energies about 1016, 2×1016, 5×1016 and 1017 ev. From the shower rates, no evidence of a deviation from the power law spectrum, R(>E) ∝ E -1·7, was found. The results are analysed in solar and sidereal time. In solar time no variations greater than 1% for the 1016 ev showers or 10% for the 1017 ev showers were found, and these amplitudes could easily arise as a result of statistical fluctuations. In sidereal time, no variation greater than 0·6% was observed at an energy of 1016 ev. At 2×1016 and 5×10 16 ev, small variations were observed which had about 1% chance of being due to random fluctuations. The bearing of these results on theories of the origin of cosmic rays is discussed.

This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit: