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Home of the Cosmic Rays
Published: 2 February 2010
Scientists long tried to figure out why some spots on Earth had more radioactive air than others. It wasn鈥檛 until 1912, when Victor Hess took an electrometer skyward in a balloon, that it became clear the extra radiation was coming, not from inside the Earth, but from above it. Way above it. But where exactly did these 鈥渃osmic rays,鈥 as physicist Robert Millikan dubbed them, come from? (The rays are, more precisely, high-energy charged particles.) An international network of astronomers, including researchers from 平特五不中, just might have a lead on this mystery.