Cloud Chambers and Cosmic Rays: The Quest to Unravel One of the Most Dazzling Mysteries of the Universe

Silk, vapor, and the substance of life.

In the final year of his twenties, the Austrian physicist Victor Franz Hess (June 24, 1883–December 17, 1964) climbed into the basket of a balloon, carefully stationed the exquisitely precise new electroscopes he had built himself, and ascended into the sky to probe a mystery that had long puzzled scientists: the presence of ionizing radiation and electricity in the air. Hess flew day and night into the moody skies, through icy sunshine and black storms —...