Science: Millikan v. Regener

SCIENCE

Balloon manufacturers once charged $100 each for sounding balloons not more than 40 inches in diameter. Now investigators of the upper air can get the same balloons for $2 each. Last summer five strings of such balloons, five in each string, were sent up periodically from San Antonio, Tex. to heights of 92,000 ft.(about 17½ miles). When the weakest balloon in the string burst, due to the thinning outside air, the rate of ascent of the other four was checked. When the second bag blew up, the remaining ones hovered practically stationary until a clockwork device released a red parachute and dropped a self-charging electroscope which had been recording cosmic ray intensity all the while. Four of the five electroscopes were recovered, sent to Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan of California Institute of Technology.

With this data from the highest altitude to which he had ever sent instruments, Dr. Millikan reported last week that cosmic ray intensity increases to a maximum at 66,000 ft., then falls off 22% on the way up to 92,000 ft. This contradicts the generally accepted finding of Erich Regener of Stuttgart who sent unmanned balloons up more than 100,000 ft., found increasing cosmic Bombardment up to 85,000 ft., a fairly steady intensity above that altitude.