Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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19

I could see no difference in flying in an airplane at 50,000 feet and looking down and seeing colors on the ground then there is from the capsule.

Let's

switch the subject again. Did you have an opportunity to try closing your eyes and seeing the Sorenkoff Radiation flashes?

Seeing what?

Radiation flashes from energetic particles fastened to your eyeballs.

Is that another __. First time I heard of it.

What do you call this again now?

Sorenkoff Radiation by a good Russian friend of that name.

Golly, they missed that one on briefing.

(statement, a inaudible)

When a cosmic ray passes through a material in which the--its velocity exceeds the velocity of light in the medium you have this radiation given out—Sorenkoff Radiation and John Winckler of Minnesota thought that you might be able to observe this if you shut your eyes when the heavies came through.

(statement, inaudible)......

Are these suppose to be very visible, very bright or just--

No one knows because they never get down to the earth's surface. They would have been in the blue light.

We didn't ride around for any period of time with the eyes closed. There was enough going on that--this eye patch, we had that. That was intentionally done, not to two eyes, just to one so that you'd still monitor everything that was going on. So I did not ride around with the eyes shut any period of time.

Alright. Let's get to the luminous particles. Back to page 1.