victor francis hess

"On what can we now place our hopes of solving the many riddles which still exist as to the origin and composition of cosmic rays?" -Victor Francis Hess We've come a tremendously long way in our understanding of the Universe, but there are plenty of mysteries still to be revealed. Way back in the late 1800s, we noticed that there was an unaccounted-for excess in the amount of ionization in the upper atmosphere, something that our Sun and Earth, by themselves, couldn't explain. Victor Francis Hess -- the originator of the quote atop -- decided to go see for himself, and conducted a series of…