Cosmic radiationIn 1910, cosmic radiation was the subject of a paper published in Physikalische Zeitchrift by Theodor Wulf, a priest and amateur physicist. He reported the result of four days of observations he made the previous Spring from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He suggested that Earth was under constant bombardment from radiation from outer space, from sources other than the sun. Using a portable electroscope as a detector, Wulf found the ionization rate at the top of the tower was not even half that at ground level. This was surprising, because it was a much smaller decrease than expected from the prevailing belief that the radiation came from the ground. |
