The survival of heavy nuclei in cosmic ray source environments

Results from the Goddard balloon spectrometer and the results reported by Soviet scientists using the Proton series of satellites are summarized. The important experimental results from the balloon spectrometer experiment are as follows: (1) On a total-energy scale, protons constitute only a minor proportion of the cosmic rays, only 20 percent. The rest of the cosmic rays are complex nuclei. (2) All the nuclei have the same power low spectrum in total energy and so the composition seems to be independent of energy.