Gravity Survey of the Serpent Mound Area, Southern Ohio

Author Institution: Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210Over most of south-central Ohio, the sedimentary Paleozoic rocks exposed at the surface are relatively flat-lying, but in the Serpent Mound area of Highland and Adams Counties they show a circular feature, four miles in diameter, in which the rocks are complexly faulted. This structure has not yet been satisfactorily explained; two of the hypotheses proposed to explain its origin are 1) that it was caused by a "cryptovolcanic" event and 2) that it is an "astrobleme," produced by the impact of a meteoritic body. These two possible mechanisms might be distinguished by the attendant differences in the density variations produced: the cryptovolcanic structure could be associated with large lateral variations in density at the level of the basement rocks, while the meteoritic impact could produce shatter zones and brecciated layers, and small reductions in density in the rock lying closer to the surface. A closely-spaced network of gravity stations extending beyond the limits of the surface expression of the ring structure shows no gravity anomaly pattern that can be related to the surface features. Supporters of the astrobleme hypothesis are more likely to find this evidence useful than are the cryptovolcanists

The homestake surface-underground scintillations: Description

Two new detectors are currently under construction at the Homestake Gold Mine a 140-ton Large Area Scintillation Detector (LASD) with an upper surface area of 130 square meters, a geometry factor (for an isotropic flux) of 1200 square meters, sr, and a depth of 4200 m.w.e.; and a surface air shower array consisting of 100 scintillator elements, each 3 square meters, spanning an area of approximately square kilometers. Underground, half of the LASD is currently running and collecting muon data; on the surface, the first section of the air shower array will begin operation in the spring of 1985. The detectors and their capabilities are described

Detection of a Cosmic Ray with Measured Energy Well Beyond the Expected Spectral Cutoff due to Cosmic Microwave Radiation

We report the detection of a 51-joule (320 +/- 90 EeV) cosmic ray by the Fly's Eye air shower detector in Utah. This is substantially greater than the energy of any previously reported cosmic ray. A Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min cutoff of the energy spectrum (due to pion photoproduction energy losses) should occur below this energy unless the highest energy cosmic rays have traveled less than about 30 Mpc. The error box for the arrival direction in galactic coordinates is centered on b=9.6 deg, l=163.4 deg. The particle cascade reached a maximum size near a depth of 815 g/cm^2 in the atmosphere, a depth which does not uniquely identify the type of primary particle.Comment: uuencoded compressed postscript, 20 pages, to appear in ApJ (3/1/95

Matter Creation via Vacuum Fluctuations in the Early Universe and Observed Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Events

Cosmic rays of the highest energy, above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off of the spectrum, may originate in decays of superheavy long-living X-particles. These particles may be produced in the early Universe from vacuum fluctuations during or after inflation and may constitute a considerable fraction of Cold Dark Matter. We calculate numerically their abundance for a wide range of models. X-particles are considered to be either bosons or fermions. Particles that are several times heavier than inflaton, m_inflaton \approx 10^{13} GeV, and were produced by this mechanism, can account for the critical mass in the Universe naturally. In some cases induced isocurvature density fluctuations can leave an imprint in anisotropy of cosmic microwave background radiation.Comment: LaTeX, 9 page