THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COSMIC RAYS, Part 2

[Music] [Music] lights [Music] please now this is the model of the Earth with its atmospheric shell this is the vast magnetic field of the earth these wires represent the lines of magnetic force now the Earth's field like any other magnetic field can bend the path of charged particles that move through it but not of neutral particles for instance a neutral particle coming from outer space this is the solid particle this trailing tubes its track now this neutral particle having no charge will shoot through to the Earth's atmosphere in a straight line as if there were no magnetic field at all so if the space fagans were neutral solid particles they'd be unaffected by the magnetic field and they'd crash into our atmospheric ocean equally all around the globe and since each Fagan would create the same average number of henchmen the resulting henchmen would rain down evenly over the whole earth below ah oh yes you think if Fagan were neutral the henchmen would drain down evenly over the whole earth n Charles please I have ears I can hear I beg your pardon now let's see what happens if Fagan is charged ah yes let's see what happens if Fagan is charged yet if the incoming particles were charged now let's let these little red balls and red tubes represent the charged particles in their paths if the particles coming in from outer space are charged particles their paths would be bent by the field as you can see by these few examples here and the degree of bending is greatest where the particles come in at right angles to the lines of force as they do here about the equator as a result and this is a key Point many of the particles coming in near the equator would have their paths bent so much that they'd miss the shell of the atmosphere completely look at this one for instance coming in at this angle being so strongly radically that it's gone out and hasn't come at all near our Earth's atmosphere so to this one coming in this direction and steaming out here again without Ever Getting near the atmosphere while at the poles charge particles would be bent very little if at all because they come in parallel to the lines of force look at these how straight the paths are compared to the curved Paths of those near the equator so if the fagans were charged more of them would smash into our atmosphere at the poles than at the equator kicking more henchmen into action beneath him at the poles than at the equator and this so-called latitude effect could be measured by counting the number of collision pieces that rain down on us at various latitudes at the bottom of our air ocean lights please ah the more henchmen below the more fagans above excellent reasoning the reasoning was simple compared to the leg work for operation count the henchmen the cap and gown Private Eyes didn't just cover one street one city one County they blanketed the whole globe from pole to pole from the halls of monuma to the shores of triple [Applause] sifted then evaluated the data from this Global leg work not counting the professorial bunions plainly showed that for every hundred henchmen particles hitting the Earth at the poles only a 87 struck at the equator now that meant there were more fagans at the poles than at the equator there was a Latitude effect and that could only mean that at least some of the Space Invaders were charged the detectives were closing in the master crook was armed with an electric charge that means Fagan couldn't be a neutron right Mr Poe a neutron has no charge then he must be a proton or an electron 100 rues says Fagan is a proton covered with two lb my friend I say he's an electron to three lb takes three PB two well well well we'll soon know now Dr research was Fagan's charge positive or negative yes and wait till you hear how the Learned Hawk Shaw solv that problem and with the Earth again go ahead doc let's turn over our globe in its magnetic field so that were looking down on the South Pole now we already know that an incoming particle with a positive charge would be bent to the right by the magnetic field or to the left if it had a negative charge well then an Italian physicist Bruno Rossi reasoned that if the cosmic rays were positive the Earth's magnetic field would cause a majority of them to strike from the West smashing more henchmen into us from the West while if they were negative a majority would strike us from the East and bingo the missing clue came in from Mexico yes where Three Investigators Arthur Compton th Johnson and leis Alvarez reported conclusively more henchmen came in from the West that could only mean at least some of the cosmic Invaders carried a positive charge Fagan's charge was positive mystery's clearing up huh clear it up like daylight is Mystery for children of course your story is over of your three fundamental building blocks electron proton neutron only one was positive please let me Crush these excuse the expression story tellers now you got Neutron no charge electron negative proton positive so vagan is proton give me the money not so fast there Fade All why not wait a minute wait a minute show him the posi still doc positron Stills this is a photograph of a cosmic ray track taken in a cloud chamber on the 2nd of August 1932 by Professor Carl Anderson with Caltech now the light curve track seems to match the footprint of an electron but instead of curving to the left in the cloud chambers's magnetic field as a respectable electron should this strange particle curved to the right is oy Dumpty for photograph maybe upside down uh-uh that's one of the most famous photographs in science dasty got Anderson a Nobel Prize the first picture of the tracks of a hitherto unknown particle of matter a positive electron a particle positively charged why couldn't that be Fagen dasty instead of your proton I move we reject the entry second emotion third why Mr Po by introducing a new suspect at this late date you have violated a cardinal rule of the detective story yeah is cheating is my money but think of the impact of this discovery Edgar why it's as if your detective dupan searching for a human criminal ran across an unknown species of man it's astounding it's cheating a brand new kind of matter has been discovered yes and a fourth henchman for Fagan the patron B what difference positron proton pimpleton this is useful is Big doings about little n now wait a minute Dusty out of littal ndings like this have come the big doings of science Newton wondering why an apple hits his out of that came the law of gravitation Ren and trying to figure out why his photographic plates got fogged came up with x-ray [Music] oh Maxwell tinkering with some tricky equations came up with a key to television and this chase after little particles is the key for something big just about the biggest something man ever ran into Mr DVI nuclear force nuclear force that's big nuclear force we've heard rumors about that exactly what is meant by force that's a large order Mr Po if I could answer that I'd be 10 Einstein rolled in one but in general by force science means a strange almost Mystic quality of power possessed by matter it manifests itself in three ways gravitational force electromagnetic force and nuclear force oh yes you see there three yeah now in a sense a force can be likened to an Army Force exerts its power through individual units just as an army does through its individual units or Soldiers with gravity the force that holds the whirling planets in their orbits the smallest individual unit the soldier that does this planet holding is said by some sign SST to be the graviton although this graviton has never been pinned down or observed in any way now if we focus down to just one atom not large bodies but just one atom helium for instance another Force takes over electromagnetic force now this second force keeps the atomic solar system from flying apart and the electromagnetic Soldier that's called a photon and unlike the graviton this Photon has been measured and directly observed now if we go deep into the heart of the atom into its nucleus we come to the third and most Sensational Force nuclear force that's the force that holds the protons and neutrons locked in the tiny nucleus the awesome Force man is now unlocking for his own [Music] use the force which will surely change the way of life for every man woman and child on earth and the soldier the soldier that does the holding of nuclear force that dramatically enough came out of the cosmic ray chase out of tracking down Fagan's henchmen here's the way it happened and boy this really rocked the Science World in Japan in 1935 at Osaka University a genius named Hideki yukawa sat alone with a pencil and a piece of paper and he came up with a most amazing prediction he said that the soldier the unit of this terrific new force would appear believe it or not as a small particle a piece of actual matter he calculated it would be about 200 times heavier than the electron and get this would live about a millionth of a second then poof it would disappear die well this was just too deep even for the highbrows yukawa's prediction dropped like a feather in the scientific Pond but meanwhile the cosmic ray Chase was still going on since the discovery of the pitron the scientific working stiffs were photographing Cloud chamber tracks around the clock to see if there were more new particles among Fagan's henchmen well up popped the devil Seth nemire and Carl Anderson of Caltech and JC Street Denise e Stevenson of Harvard all came up with a new track at about the same time uh what is it a real Oddball the track of a particle more than 200 times heavier than an electron on and which if you please lives only a millionth of a second or so yukawa's prediction his nuclear solder why of course no Doon it oh this strange new particle called a muon just didn't behave as yukawa said it should it wasn't quite the nuclear Soldier he' predicted there was a bit of disappointment on yukawa's prophetic face but there was no disappointment in the particle Department the bug-eyed cosmic ray detectives realized that that they'd stumbled onto another brand new piece of matter that no one ever dreamed existed and another henchman for Fagan's Rogues Gallery the me mesan then some 10 years later came the happy ending happy for the Japanese wizard it came from the developing tanks of a laboratory in the University of Bristol England on photographic plates Exposed on the tops of the Bolivian Andes and the French Pyrenees three astonished cosmic ray Hunters an Englishman CF Powell an Italian GPS aini and a Brazilian CM ltis ran across the track of a quite similar but heavier Mason Eureka this was it this Soldier did obey orders this newer particle it's called a p Mason did seem to fit yuka's equations his amazing prediction came true and he was awarded a Nobel Prize for it now Mr Po I think I can answer your question most people believe that the UN of nuclear force the tremendously powerful soldier that holds the heart of the atom together is the pie Mason P Mason yes and a six Fagan henchman got his name on the police blot the pie Mason but uh weren't the detectives a bit confused by all these odd henchmen of fagans yes I should think they would be yes confused they were Bewitched bothered and bewildered yes and they still are think of it as late as 1932 science had the universe all neatly wrapped up in three little basic packages electron proton [Music] neutron just 25 years later in 1957 the number of separate and distinct particles of matter had jumped to at least 20 including two really out of this world babies the neutrino a kind of ghost particle that leaves no Footprints yet apparently Zips through lead as if it were butter and the newly discovered antiproton which some people think is one of the building blocks of an Unseen World a sort of left-handed world of matter matching the right-handed world we live in yes not to mention K meons Toons hyperons V particles a veritable Deluge and no one knows how many more henchmen are going to show up or what they're going to mean scientists are crying for a for a Moses to lead them out of the Wilderness of nuclear particles I say proton yes yeah yes what about the detective story what about Fagan oh yes yes oh they nailed Fagan all right to do it they went right up through the air ocean and took his picture his picture well perhaps impression is a better word okay doc impression with this new detection Gadget it's a cosmic ray Emulsion plate it's very much like like an ordinary photographic plate only it's more sensitive and it's got a much thicker coating of silver bromide now the aim of the science detectives was to get a flash of old Fagan on here before he smashed into our air atoms well obviously that meant going very high indeed way up almost to the top of our atmosphere where the population of air atoms is very scarce with these lightweight plates and a new kind of balloon named the Skyhook they did the trick Sky hooks quite easily carry instruments up to 140,000 ft or more and can stay up there for several days during which time police switchboards Buzz with flying saucer reports ah but it's with rockets that we really take instruments up into Fagan's home territory up to 150 Mi up to where the Emulsion plate is face to face with Fagan himself from dozens of Rocket flights from literally hundreds of balloon launchings all over the world [Music] pretty clear picture of the master criminal began to emerge after a king-sized Chase of over 50 years here's what Fagan looks like or rather what his Trail looks like as he smashes through the silver bromide on the photographic plate and this is what happens when Fagan hits one of the silver atoms Square on the nucleus wait for wait he's got the biggest sock in the universe the first to actually mug Fagan were some Chicago detectives yes a group of physic headed by Marcel Shine from microscopic examinations of the tracks left in their emulsions they announced that most of the fagans the primary Rays from outer space were protons naked hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons protons I was right give me the money doctor TCH me I was right no only partially right Mr DVI in 1948 physicist from the universities of Minnesota and Rochester found other primary tracks too heavy too highly charged to be protons and the most numerous of these were made by naked helium atoms and in addition the tracks of still heavier atoms were found in other words the fagans are really atoms common familiar atoms stripped of their electrons and hurtling through space at Unholy speed Atomic bullets from Beyond the Beyond crashing into us with almost the speed of light and when he says crash he means crash these cosmic ray babies crack into us with energies of more than a million billion electron volts more than 5 million times as strong as an a bomb atam that's our space boy Fagan and his identity naked atom amazing absolutely amazing I Mone but no more amazing than the detectives who tracked him down do you mean to say they actually know where he comes from well they've got one pretty good idea tell them about it DOC well many scientists now think the cosmic fagans are being spawned continuously in our own galaxy The Milky Way They believe that all stars including our own Sun are constantly casting off particles into space through surface explosions and that these cast off star particles zillions and zillions of them gradually acquire their Cosmic speeds and energies by being bounced back and forth between Galactic clouds Galactic clouds yes our own Milky Way which looks something like our neighboring Galaxy Andromeda contains not only billions of stars that spiral around but also millions of truly enormous Galactic clouds composed of dust and gas [Music] these Galactic clouds float and swirl through the Milky Way in all [Music] directions sometimes they look black and they obscure the stars behind them these swirling clouds apparently create gigantic magnetic fields the late enrio fmy one of the great pioneers of modern science a fery suggested that within our Milky Way gargantuan badminton games go on in which the players are these huge magnetic fields and the birds are tiny naked atoms which have been shot into space from erupting Stars the atoms are naked because the star heat is so intense that atoms can't hang onto their satellite electrons as they do at normal temperatures when such an atom has exploded into space from a star it will eventually collide with a magnetic field and bounce [Music] all we bounce off with more speed if the field is moving toward it years later it runs into another gigantic field in the sense shooting off in another Direction after a million years or so of this being batted back and forth these atoms they're our fagans remember their numbers countless are kicked up to almost the speed of light and sent hurtling through our Milky Way in all directions the tiny dot which is our Earth moving through space sails through this Myriad of shooting particles and a tiny fraction of them crash into us as Cosmic rids gentlemen do you realize what this means the fagans bombarding us from outer space are pieces of matter from billions of stars and and since these space bullets are the same atomic particles we have on Earth that means the stars are made of the same stuff we're made of a part of the eggs you had for breakfast this morning could have come from Orion or from the Big Dipper and some of the carbon in this young lady's shining red hair might Once Upon a Time have been Stardust from an exploded Supernova or from the Southern Cross [Applause] why you could almost say that in tracking down Fagan the science detectives uncovered material proof of the Oneness of the whole great Cosmos Mr scientist for highbrows this could be exciting maybe but what is meaning for common people who work love hate yes yes what is the meaning for ordinary Mortals oh a very big meaning indeed Mr dooski it's possible that how people work love hate has been and is even now being affected by cosmic rays it's possible that in the millions and billions of years they've been bombarding the Earth these cosmic space bullets could be partly responsible for evolution by causing mutations sudden changes as they smash into our reproductive genes my words WHYY it's conceivable that your enormous writing Talent could be traced to some weld directed cosmic ray hitting your great-grandfather in just the right Gene my writing cosmic rays do you realize what this would mean philosophically Edgar the changes in living things may be controlled by the stars and still more significant Mr Dickens is someday out of the Strange Case of the cosmic rays out of this out of thee World detective story may come the answer to the great riddle of what makes the universe take well gentlemen how about it do we get the Edgar uh Charles yes yes I make my vote now yeah I know no no not science is for people I thought was just for long hairs I vote D yes you do yes a truly remarkable story hey Doc did you hear that but an epic adventure of the human spirit the mind of man daring to EXP explore the unknown reaches of the heavens just to track down these these tiny particles of Stardust so packed with Primal power they come wing with the speed of light Celestial Messengers from out where the morning stars sing together good line Charles he excellent poetry you but what is the message they bring and why huh what gentlemen we thank you for a saga of brilliant scientific accomplishment but as a detective story and that's what we're judging as a detective story your tale has a fundamental weakness motive motive Fedor they've established no motive for their Cosmic fagans but edar why do they bombard the Earth Edgar if they knew motive for cosmic rays they'd have answer to great mystery of creation itself I vote Yes I vote no their story is unfinished Charles you vote Yes No you know I been remind of Isaac Newton he's reminded it's a good story give him just a moment just a moment fader I haven't finished I'm reminded of Isaac Newton perhaps the greatest scientific mind that ever lived and how he humbly described his Monumental discoveries as now and then finding a smoother Pebble or a prettier shell while the great ocean of Truth lay before me pebbl that great ocean of Truth still lies undiscovered before for you briefly Charles how do you vote I vote we invite these gentlemen to come back in 50 years to tell us what new chapters they've added to their Cosmic tale ah excellent Charles most excellent thank and who will write these new chapters the young the inheritors of all the knowledge and culture of the ages of all the dreams and hopes of those who went before us what an exciting time to be young yes and what a glorious opportunity to add to man's history to harness these nuclear Fires for man's use to accept the challenge of creation and to use the gifts God gave us to explore the grandest of all Frontiers the universe for the more we know of creation the closer we get to the Creator gentlemen here's to Stardust [Music] [Applause] [Music] might [Applause] [Music] the Bell Telephone system takes pride in bringing you this program in its series of shows on science we wish to express our gratitude to the distinguished Board of advisers who guide the choice and treatment of scientific matter for the series biology and genetics medicine bacteriology and botany chemistry geoh physics physics [Music] anthropology mathematics engineering for the program you have just seen our thanks to the special advisers who have suggested and checked the scientific material the Bell Telephone system is indebted to all these men and to many institutions for the generous support they have given this Venture in public education through entertainment [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]