COSMIC RAY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cosmic ray mean? 

• COSMIC RAY (noun)
  The noun COSMIC RAY has 1 sense:

1. highly penetrating ionizing radiation of extraterrestrial origin; consisting chiefly of protons and alpha particles; collision with atmospheric particles results in rays and particles of many kinds

  Familiarity information: COSMIC RAY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COSMIC RAY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Highly penetrating ionizing radiation of extraterrestrial origin; consisting chiefly of protons and alpha particles; collision with atmospheric particles results in rays and particles of many kinds

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Hypernyms ("cosmic ray" is a kind of...):

ionizing radiation (high-energy radiation capable of producing ionization in substances through which it passes)

Holonyms ("cosmic ray" is a part of...):

cosmic radiation (radiation coming from outside the solar system)

 Context examples 

Data from the cosmic ray instrument tell researchers that a shock wave from the sun has hit.

(Sun sends more 'tsunami waves' to Voyager 1, NASA)

Because cosmic ray particles carry an electrical charge, their paths become scrambled when they encounter magnetic fields on their journey to Earth.

(NASA’s Fermi Mission Links Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-ray ‘Halo’ to Antimatter Puzzle, NASA)

A dating method that uses the disintegration of the [SUP]14[/SUP]C atom to determine the age of sample containing carbon. [SUP]14[/SUP]C is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray bombardment, and has a half-life of 5570 years, making it useful for dating samples in the range of 0-40,000 years.

(Carbon dating, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

Soon after the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958, American and Russian scientists concluded that the process of cosmic ray albedo neutron decay (CRAND) was likely the source of the high-energy particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field.

(Six-decade-old space mystery solved with shoebox-sized satellite called a CubeSat, National Science Foundation)

The first was too small to be noticed when it occurred and was only discovered later, but the second was clearly registered by the spacecraft's cosmic ray instrument in March of 2013.

(Sun sends more 'tsunami waves' to Voyager 1, NASA)

For the past decade, cosmic ray measurements by Fermi, NASA’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) aboard the International Space Station, and other space experiments near Earth have seen more positrons at high energies than scientists expected.

(NASA’s Fermi Mission Links Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-ray ‘Halo’ to Antimatter Puzzle, NASA)