Evidence for time and directional enhancements of multimuon cosmic-ray events

We have observed 1.05×106 single-muon and 6869 multimuon events deep underground with the Soudan 1 nucleon-decay detector. The single-muon flux is consistent with isotropy and with results of previous experiments. We have found indications of bursts of multimuon events, particularly from a direction near Cygnus X-3. These bursts arrive from an extended angular region of 30°×30°. The size of the angular region and the lack of a corresponding effect in the single-muon events are difficult to understand. In addition, there is weaker evidence for an excess in the time-integrated multimuon flux near the north galactic pole. We have evaluated the possibility that these effects are caused by random or systematic errors.