Nuclear disintegrations produced by cosmic rays

Measurements have been made on the energy and angular distributions of the charged particles from disintegration ‘stars’ produced in the silver and bromine nuclei of photographic emulsions exposed to cosmic radiation. The observations extended over a wide range of excitation energies (100 to 700 MeV). The energy spectra and angular distributions of the protons can be explained in all cases by simple evaporation theory. This energy distribution shows also a high-energy tail consisting of direct knock-on protons and slow mesons. At high excitation energies the α-particles exhibit collimation effects which are probably due to localized ‘boiling’ or a form of fission.