How Did Victor Hess Changed The World

Over 104 years ago, on August 7th, 1912, an Austrian scientist named Victor Hess changed the Astronomy and Physics world forever when he discovered cosmic rays through a strange experiment that took place in a hot air balloon. Cosmic rays are high-energy, subatomic particles that appear outside the Earth’s atmosphere. These rays are known to strike to down on Earth, which may seem dangerous but even very energetic primary rays crash into the Earth’s atmosphere and they basically never make it to the ground. However, there are some secondary particles that are almost thrown from the collision and eventually can make it all the way to the Earth’s surface. However, this small amount of low energy particles has been interacting with the human …show more content…
In 1901, Hess studied and at Graz University, he then received his medical degree in 1910. Later on, Hess shortly worked at a Physical Institute in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Here, a man by the name of Professor von Schweidler got Victor Hess interested in study different forms of radioactivity. For 10 years after graduating from Graz University, Hess served as the assistant of Stephan Meyer, a scientist who studied radium and other sciences. It was during this time that Hess began to focus radiation in the atmosphere. In the early 1900s, Victor Hess traveled very high in the sky while in a hydrogen balloon that he used to analyze the amount of radiation in the atmosphere. Hess’ went up in the air in search of the origin of ionizing radiation; the most accepted argument of all was that it was the rocks on Earth that were giving off the radiation. In 1911, Hess’ balloon was able to get to 1100 meters in the air, however, Hess was still unable to see any noticeable change in the amount of radiation in the sky and at ground level. Close to a year later, on his 7th trip of the year, Hess was able to make in 5300 meters in the air, where he was able to discover that the rate of ionization was close to 3x that at the ground. He was then able to say that radiation was infiltrating Earth’s atmosphere from above. It was at that moment that Hess could confidently state that the answer to his problem was a new type of energetic …show more content…
Climate change is one of the most serious and dangerous crises of the future. While some people argue the presence of climate change, others dispute over whether or not cosmic rays play a role in their existence. Despite answering the large questions like its origin, the future of cosmic rays might be around its relation to climate change. The argument that cosmic rays affect climate change is centered starts with the rays’ ability to ionize the air in our atmosphere, which means that they can transform a certain substance into one or more ions. Henrik Svensmark, a scientist who began to test the relation in the 1990s, proved through numerous experiments that cosmic rays create more cloud nuclei or CCN, where cloud droplets appear, which then constructs clouds with lower altitudes. These lower clouds then reflect solar energy from Earth into space, which then results in the cooling or warming of the planet. This very long and complicated process is Henrik Svensmark’s “theory of cosmoclimatology”. This belief is supported by the recent data findings that the show correlation between the increase of cosmic ray percentage around the atmosphere and an increase in low cloud amount. Even though these tests and theories were from over 20 years ago, considering the fact that climate change is becoming increasingly problematic, more and more scientists are looking in to see if the