Dr. Richard Webb | an e-mail onto Dr. Millikan, the Origin of Cosmic Rays and a wish to receive a judgment of the foregoing analysis from a scientist at Max Planck Gesellschaft.

From: Richard Webb
To: E. S. anonymized
Cc: Marc Fasnacht
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 11:21 AM
Subject: Millikan’s Book, Chapters on Cosmic Ray Origins, Extracts

Dear E. S.,
     I have obtained Millikan’s book on Electrons,Protons Photons Neutrons Mesotrons and Cosmic Rays, published in 1946, immediately after the atomic bombings of Japan. I am attaching extracts from Millikan’s book – from his chapters about the Origin of Cosmic Ray. But before I discuss it, I recommend that you fetch the book from your library are browse through it. He has a chapter on nuclear energy, and asserts his opinion that nuclear energy ought not be used for an energy source – that solar energy ought to be used. He calls that “cheap atomic energy.” He also has a section on “The Control of Atomic Bombs,” and urges that all atomic bombs be abolished and no more made, and that an international organization be established for inspecting countries, to ensure no making of atomic bombs.
If you would like that section, I would send it to you.
     Now about the Cosmic Ray Origin.
     I have studied the book Fundamentals of Modern Physics, by Richtmyer and Kennard, and learned the theory and experimental measurements for the energy of virtually all of the cosmic ray particles – average energy of about 6 BeV (6 GeV), falling off rapidly so that hardly any particles beyond 20 BeV, and that virtually all are above 0.5 BeV, about. Before I knew about Millikan’s book, I thought that it is interesting that the energy of the cosmic rays is of the same magnitude as the rest mass of hydrogen nuclei, carbon nuclei, &c. – that is, the rest mass of the low atomic number atoms, which make up most of the material on the Earth. The thought arose in my mind that perhaps the origin of the cosmic rays is the release of the rest mass energy caused by some agent – an agent among the kind that I am worrying about being created by LHC (and Rhic, &c.) machines when taking them up to greater and greater energies.
     The sections of Richtmyer and Kennard treating of the origin of cosmic rays was less than satisfying – being lots of theory about magnetic fields of the cosmos and remnants of super novas.
     Well, then I discovered Millikan’s chapters on Cosmic Ray origins, and he proposed that the origin is the obvious, the annihilation of the rest mass of atoms of the cosmic dust. His reason and experimental supports that he presents is reasonable. So, I conclude that the catastrophe that I am worrying about has its possibility presented to us by the fact of the cosmic rays – that annihilation is going on in the outer space about us, by some agent., perhaps due to the low extremely low temperature of the dust. I think that ought to be assumed, to be prudent. It means that our Earthly atoms are susceptible of undergoing annihilation, given some agent to trigger it. Consider, as Millikan considered, the release of rest mass energy in a nuclear fusion reaction. It is fortunate that the in the process of the fusion of two Earthly atoms, the release of the rest mass stops at about 0.25%. The agent for that reaction is simply the two nuclei approaching each other. But could another agent, or strange neutron, be produced by the LHC collisions which would enter an Earthly atomic nuclei and trigger the release of rest mass energy, and without the release process stopping at 0.25%, but just keep going?
     So, I have examined Richtmyer and Kennard, and Leighton, and a book on Cosmic Rays by Gaisser that is cited by NASA, and none of them address’s Millikan’s hypothesis and his analysis in support of it! I think Millikan was shunned by the U.S. Government, and the U.S. Government-supported physicists, like Fermi, Richtmyer, Bethe, Weiskopf, &c. For Millikan wrote that burning up Uranium for fuel energy is morally wrong, and that the making of atomic bombs is morally wrong. It could be that Fermi made his theory of the origin of cosmic ray energies in reaction to Millikan, to give the Government a scientific article to divert attention from Millikan’s ideas. I have checked Wikipedia for their write up on Millikan, and it has two paragraphs alleging dishonest acts of Millikan, so as to destroy his credibility and name.
     Yes, it might be that cosmic charged particles however created, could bounce off moving magnetic fields (star materials in motion), and become accelerated, and thereby achieve such energies as the Auger and Fly’s Eye associates and CERN’s LHC safety assessment group claim exists (though I cannot rely on such claims). But so what? Even if some cosmic ray particles hit the Earth at 1017 eV or more, amounting to an extremely tiny faction (about 0.000000000001) of the cosmic ray particles that come into the Earth at .5 to 20 BeV (about 3 /sq.cm/sec), that would not prove that the LHC could not create a catastrophic radical neutralon that would trigger a chain reaction release of rest mass energy of our Earthly atoms; for the rest mass of atomic nuclei is the obvious prime possibility for the origin of the cosmic rays, since their respective energy magnitudes are the same! And so, the cosmic rays prove the possibility of our Earthly atoms can be annihilated. Whatever is the agent for the annihilation of the atoms in the outer space that make the cosmic rays, we cannot assume that it is an exclusive agent. We must assume that other agents might be created. I doubt whether any other planet in the universe, if there are other planets, had suffered hydrogen bombs like those invented by Fermi and his colleagues. So, man can make, and has made, strange (unnatural) things.
     The foregoing is my tentative conclusion. I want to study Fermi’s two articles – the ones that I hope you can obtain for me. Leighton’s gives an outline of Fermi’s theory. (It is interesting that Leighton treats Fermi’s theory, but suppresses Millikan’s theory.)
     I have read a summary of the NASA and a CalTech physicist papers on cosmic ray origins. These say that the cosmic rays are the results of super nova discharges, which then bounce around magnetic fields in space to become randomized. Well, that is a lot of theory. By this theory we are to believe that the result of all that process is that the energy happens to be exactly the rest mass energies of the low atomic number atoms. I think such theory of the origin of the cosmic rays is not reliable for judging the “safety” of the LHC, and other high energy physics machines.
     I would you like to have your judgment of the foregoing analysis, or before that a discussion or conference about it.
Sincerely yours,
Dick
Richard E. Webb

Download pdf-document: Millikan’s Book, Chapter 16 on Nuclear Energy and Atomic Bombs (scanned and anotated by Dr. Richard Webb)