THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COSMIC RAYS

[Music] the Bell Telephone system brings you one of a series of programs on science man's effort to understand nature's laws want to see an out of this world True Detective story we'll sharpen your wits and hop on your magic carpet you've got one you know your [Music] [Applause] [Music] imagination Phantom Invaders from outer space master keys to nuclear magic Adventure Discovery the greatest 50 years in the history of mankind but how do we package all that into a show it's very simple we ask your magic screen I have but when it's blank up here it's blank up the magic screen Bo maybe It Isn't So blank up [Music] here come on Magic screen come up with something here we are back in mystery land ladies and gentlemen and man oh man have we got excitement great night great tonight everybody's got a detective story candidate AG the Christie Earl Stanley Garder Dorothy sers everybody's got a candidate as the crowd Mills around the famous Academy of detection Arts and Sciences and no wonder being voted on tonight is the award the Edgar it's called for the best detective story of the first half of the 20th century best detective story uh Ed any word from the judges yet take it away Ed can just barely see the judge boy are they sweating there they are this is an absolute bore are these writers mystery is Mystery on the first page I know who did it who who done it you all recognize the chairman Edgar alen Poe whose murders in the rorc won the first Edgar never more never more to his right Charles Dickens who gave us one of the strangest detective stories ever pinned The Unfinished my of Edwin drood and on the Chairman's left is Fedor mikovich dovi and that golden skull you see on the table that's the Winner's prize the coveted Edgar of course that's it that's us gentlemen what are you doing most honorable judges we have an entry for you another entry what you talking about the contest is closed well how can it be when we've got the greatest detective story of the last 50 years The Strange Case of the cosmic rays cosmic rays Strange Case of the cosmic rays an excellent title you realize of course the detective story has certain requirements analysis deduction seemingly insignificant Clues right well our Story begins with a clue so insignificant Mr Poe it wasn't even noticed for a 100 years or more the detective story is literature it must have scope scul he says Jim roll three why the cosmic ray cases help to revolutionize the modern world look have a look Atomic power plants for the future Atomic Subs Atomic planes radioactive [Music] drugstores I opes for medicine and hold on to your hats how's that for scope well gentlemen do we qualify Theodore yet science is for me a big bore a big boore why do you realize that just while you were speaking the criminal in our case fired 20 Atomic bullets to through your head good PS in the head I like and you traced this criminal through that tiny clue you spoke of yes the Story begins as an ordinary theft theft from this simple electroscope a common instrument that's been in use to detect radiation for Generations it's just an airtight jar with an insulated metal rod from one end of which hang two pieces of gold leaf now normally they hang straight down thank you boy but as every school kid knows when an electric charge is put on the rod so the leaves become charged now as to the detection powers of the electroscope when radiation is from this piece of uranium for instance enters the jar the air inside is broken up into charged fragments some of which neutralize the charge on the leaves and cause them to fall and the stronger the radiation the faster they fall ah what is this a school room where is the mystery well the mystery is that when a charged electroscope was put aside when no known radiation was around the gold leaves mysteriously lost their charge and collapsed anyway the tiny clue so is leaking a little electricity that's a bank robbery that's just how science thought of it bank robbery roll fourth now imagine the charged electroscope as a kind of bank and the known radiations is thieves bank robbers yeah there you are depositors putting their hard-earned electrons into savings accounts wait a minute that's no depositor there that's Miss ultraviolet ray she's one of the sest of our robbers lift the electrons right off your back drop up and have a joke sometimes don't you do it there's a cousin of violets over there gamma ray ordinary walls don't mean a thing to him wow here comes a real tough bunch in from The Hideout the uranium gang those ombr have been in and out of the Calibus so often they go by numbers 234 235 and 238 I hope 235 is not carrying what I think he is you know those boys are the atom bomb boys help help help sherff robbery help they went that away put on more guards this thevery has got to stop rebuild the bank put lead walls around it 9 ft thick so with 9 ft around it the electroscope bank became the Fort Knox of science not one of our robbers was Sly enough like ultraviolet hey thank you or persistant enough like old gamma I thank you are powerful enough like the numbers boys to break in [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] no more breaking into my bank help help wait a minute what's wrong now Mr President another robbery brother somebody has broken in must be a phantom Bandit a phantom Bandit get the town Marshall get the Army the Navy call out the Marines he must be caught that is literature um well it's the point we're trying to make gentlemen is that just a few inches of lead would Shield any electroscope from all known radiations even from the most powerful x-rays but this new radiation why even lead walls 9 ft thick couldn't keep it from crashing through and collapsing the leaves that meant that some Unknown super powerful ghostly radiation was loose in the world where did this Phantom come from the first guess was that it came from some new radioactive element in the Earth but how to prove this a Jesuit physicist Theodor wolf thought he had a way father wolf reasoned if the Phantom radiation came from the Earth the higher you got in the air the weaker it would be and the slower it would discharge the leaves of an electroscope in 1910 the good father went to the foot of the Eiffel Tower he charged his electroscope and then carefully measured how long it took the unknown radiation to steal the charge from the leaves then he climbed and climbed and climbed and at the top 1,000 ft above the Earth he rechar charged his electroscope now if the unknown radiation came from the earth his electroscope should have discharged more slowly but it didn't if anything it discharged faster father wolf didn't know it but his leg work was the start of one of the greatest chases in the history of science other investigators including Victor Francis hes decided that the Eiffel Tower just wasn't high enough so in 1912 hes borrowed a balloon from the Austrian Army then he rose past father Wolf's thousand ft past 5,000 10,000 13 14 15,000 ft there he charged his electroscope again and he found that its leaves collapsed twice as fast as they did on the ground at 3 mil up the ghostly radiation instead of becoming weaker was twice as strong this really threw the science dicks for a loop the Phantom Thief couldn't possibly come from the earth so where did he come from gentlemen Gentlemen please we're on the air all in that works who gets the Edgar we are not ready yet put on a commercial go get out yes yes your Bandit is the sort of flying creat feure then a kind of atmospheric Batman that was the next guess that the strange radiation originated somewhere in our own atmosphere the argument was settled when a famous American scientist Robert a milikin took up the chase assisted by aaen now director of the Palomar and Mount Wilson observatories milikin built an electroscope that would time and record the discharge rate of the leaves and then charge them again automatically this is kind of an automatic mechanical Blood Hound the milans talkative blood hounds reporting back from balloons 50,000 ft above the plains of Texas and from the deep Waters of two California Mountain [Music] Lakes proved Beyond a doubt that the Rays could not originate in our own atmosphere but where where are the Rays coming from then the sun no is bullets coming he easy Mars no the Rays weren't coming from the Sun the Moon a planet or any single star tell them why doc well because observers in every part of the world reported a most Curious Thing the ghostly radiation Was the Same by night as by day hitting each spot of the earth continuously with equal force from every direction they which meant they couldn't be coming from any single source and so the amazed detectives were confronted with super super Rays whose Hideout was the biggest ever imagined the great Open Spaces of the entire universe yes and Milan recognizing the extraordinary nature of these Rays christened them cosmic [Applause] rays it's becoming interesting what a Pity real Phantoms and out where no one will ever see them one needn't see a criminal to know him Charles his dossier fingerprints Footprints methods of operation mental quirks often provide police with a more accurate picture than do the eyes a dosy on a ray that's exactly what the science detectives were trying to fill in a dossier now they'd already discovered The criminal's Hideout merely the whole universe all right then how about physical characteristics well radiation can be either wave Wes or particles were the Rays waves weightless energy like ordinary sunlight or solid particles of matter tiny Atomic bullets to find the answer to that one in 1929 two German science detectives Walter B and verer ker rigged up a sort of a cosmic mous trap mous trap I'll give you a quick version of the heart at least of their famous experiment with this modern equipment you mean how they found out whether cosmic rays were solid particles or waves that's right ah this I got to see now this is a bank of guer counters the two Germans knew that when electromagnetic waves like x-rays ultraviolet rays or gamma rays waves go through a guer counter only about 150 of the Waves going through could make the counter click one in 50 that's right while solid particles of matter electrons for instance would make the counter click every time one went through particles outclick waves 50 to1 that's just in one counter well by putting two Banks of counters one above the other like this and wiring him so that waves of particles have to go through both counters before they can produce a click they had the answer they did I'll figure it out waves with a 50 to1 chance of causing a click in one counter 50 to1 have about a 2500 to1 chance if they have to actuate two counters before they produce the click worse than a daily double while solid particles particles going through both counters produ a click each time one goes through okay particles have it by 2500 to 1 but where does the mous trp part come in oh the mous Trap is this thick slab of lead that's slipped in between the two counters so now this lead is thick enough to trap all stray Earthly radiation and stop it from reaching the lower counters but the hard-hitting cosmic rays go through it like a bullet through a cracker I'll switch on the mous Trap and you can determine for yourselves if the cosmic rays smashing down into this room right now are waves or particles now remember occasional clicking waves steady clicking particles particles amazing yes particles what you are hearing are actual cosmic ray bullets the same bullets that crash into all of us First Rate detection and a second entry for the dossier The Invader from outer space is a particle uh these particles is like uh breadcrumbs dandruff or v no something far more fundamental than dandruff by particles they meant the incredibly tiny bricks of matter that make up all atoms ceiling wax cabbages Kings they're all built of three fundamental building blocks the lightest of which is the electron with a negative charge and about 2,000 times heavier is the proton with a POS positive charge about the same weight as the proton as the neutron with no charge electron proton neutron but which of these trons was the criminal from outer space that was the question with only three suspects it should have been easy to pin down the culprit quite easy yes might have been if a complication hadn't Arisen ah complication good construction fed off what if you found out Mr Poe that the particles discharging El Scopes and making these Geer counters click were not the cosmic Invaders from outer space at all what if you found out that they were the the henchmen of the criminal henchmen well maybe involuntary henchmen they're really called secondaries they're bits of air atoms Shattered by the primary Invaders as they crash into our atmosphere which is a villain of your story I assure you readers have no such trouble identifying my villains take Fagan for example in Oliver Twist if you think of the character you're about to see as Fagan maybe I can straighten you out look out now there you see the earth and its cloak of atmosphere a constant rain of cosmic particles millions and millions and millions of them every second falls on the atmosphere now let's take one particle and follow it down in slow motion and that is Fagan that's right that's Fagan he's entering the Earth's atmosphere now those round things he's passing are air atoms closer you get to earth the more there are he's bound to hit one pretty quick watch what happens when he does there got a bad temper Fagan has see those little guys taking it on the lamb those are the secondaries we were talking about dozens of them bits of air atoms kicked into violent action by a primary ah I see it now the primary culprit from outer space is Fagan and the secondaries from our own air are his henchmen you see Fedor I see n oh right and another item for the dossier uh Fagan's dossier his Mo method of operation he works through henchmen this becomes interesting a mastermind operating through pawns well hardly pawns Mr Poe the the henchmen themselves were soon found to be incredibly powerful possessing an orous energy and speed additional entries for the dossier uh yeah for the henchman's dossier because now the science detectives found they needed a second dossier and where do you think they got their entries for the henchman's dossier well it seems that the henchmen leave Footprints Footprints and they were detected by a by a honey of a device a cloud chamber chamber see here Mr scientist are you trying to tell us that invisible Cosmic criminals leave visible footprints that uh perhaps even we might see yes sure you can anybody can see them right in his own kitchen soft lights doc any kid can make this kind of a two- bit Cloud chamber look first you take a piece of dry ice then a large mouth jar set the jar on top of the dry ice now it's well to put a piece of black cloth in the bottom of the jar so you can see the tracks better now take a piece of cardboard and saturate it with alcohol any kind of alcohol will do this that I'm using is just ordinary rubbing alcohol now take a hot iron we eat on top cold on the bottom now you wait a few moments for the alcohol Vapor to cool and settle now let's flash a light through that and there you are cosmic ray Footprints you can't see the actual flying particles but you can see their tracks much as invisible highflying Jets leave their visible Vapor Trails Celestial Footprints which reveal the jet speed height and Direction incredible oh I must do this trick for tolto it will kill him I can't wait to try it on will Shakespeare but it's Myck fascinating fascinating but the vapor tracks all look alike how could the detectives tell which henchmen left which Footprints oh yes indeed yes yes good question Mr Po white stock and the answer was simple but fascinating a u magnet the kind kids pick up nails with as you probably know Mr Po between the poles of a magnet there's a magnetic field as indicated by these lines of force now the detectives knew that when a charged particle enters a magnetic field its path is Bent by the field and bent at right angles to the lines of force now it's bent to the left if its charge is negative and it's bent to the right if its charge is positive well these scientific detectives reason if they were to put a cloud chamber this is a tiny model of a cloud chamber in the middle of a very powerful magnetic field the footprints would curve exactly Mr Poe the cosmic ray henchmen shooting through the cloud chamber would leave curved footprints then by placing a camera here and photographing these Cloud tracks the detectives had an ingenious way of identifying the henchmen by analyzing their curved footprints H this I like now for instance as you'll see in these actual Cloud chamber pictures this particle had a negative charge because its track curves to the left this track curves to the right so its charge was positive these are pictures of the actual henchmen aren't they not of the particles themselves but of their Vapor Trails the footprints they leave behind in the cloud chamber as they're pulled to the right or to the left by the strong magnets outside the cloud chamber when the detectives began photographing the henchman's footprints and their elaborate Cloud Chambers now equipped with an ingenious triggering system invented by PMS blacket of England GPS oculi of Italy then measuring the amount of bending and the thickness of the tracks they discovered some astounding things the henchmen were traveling at unheard of speeds speed wow finally from studies of thousands of cloud chamber photographs the henchmen were identified and who do you think they turned out to be our old Pals electron [Music] proton neutron those three building blocks of the universe flying bricks of actual matter just imagine yes but remember these energy packed babies were only the henchmen think what superpower boss man Fagan himself must have but who was this master criminal yes who that was the brain twister the sleuths had identified the gang but not the leader but since he operated well way up high an ocean of air lay between them and Fagan how to get to him I'll give you 8 to five you'll never guess how they trapped him a woman maybe um yeah sort of a mother to put the finger on Fagan they used mother earth now just one proc yes Mr dovi they actually did use the Earth to find out if Fagan was armed to find out if he carried an electric charge or was just a chunk of neutral matter [Applause] [Music]