On special features of the longitudinal development of extensive air showers and on the spectrum of cosmic rays

It is shown that, in the development of an extensive air shower (EAS) initiated by primary cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere, there is a special feature that sterms from the violation of equilibrium between EAS components and whose inclusion requires revising both EAS phenomenology and the existing experimental data obtained by indirectly measuring the energy spectrum of cosmic rays by the EAS method.