Do energetic heavy nuclei penetrate deeply into Earth's atmosphere?
We calculate the expected fluxes of cosmic ray nuclei with charge 5 </= Z </= 28 at various depths in the earth's atmosphere, taking into account the initial charge distribution, ionization loss, and various modes of fragmentation. The flux of surviving heavy nuclei is too low by a factor approximately 10(-10) to account for the ultra-high-energy Centauro events. We describe an experiment to search for highly ionizing particles that may or may not be nuclei.
Space Sciences Laboratory and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720.
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