Measuring Cosmic Energy

[LaurenG]

I found this information about measuring cosmic energy. It's a bit (lol) technical and dry. However I think it is telling especially since we are always open to science providing answers to what we already feel.

This experiment is studying the highest energy cosmic rays: particles of order 10**17 - 10**20 eV that strike the earth's atmosphere. They initiate giant showers in the atmosphere and our experiment detects these showers by the fluorescence light emitted by nitrogen atoms excited by the shower particles. The detectors are located on the tops of two desert mountains in west central Utah where the "seeing" is very good.
The interactions of cosmic ray protons of energy greater than about 6 x 10**19 eV with the cosmic microwave background radiation is an important energy-loss mechanism for these protons, and is expected to be so strong that no particles above this energy should be seen if their sources are farther away than about 50 Mpc. The nearest known source that is large and energetic enough to accelerate a proton to such an energy is about 100 Mpc away, so our expectation is that no cosmic ray protons above this energy should exist. This is called the GZK limit. In 1991 a previous generation of our experiment observed a cosmic ray particle of energy 3.2 x 10**20 eV, and a handful of additional particles above the GZK limit have been observed by other experiments since that time. This is a serious dilemma.


The goal of our experiment is to first confirm with good statistics whether the GZK limit is actually violated (our preliminary data indicate that it is), and second to study these remarkable events. For example we will measure their arrival directions. If they all came from the same point in the sky one would expect that the dilemma would have an astrophysical solution: some new type of astrophysical source would be located there. If they were isotropically distributed then perhaps a particle physics solution to the dilemma would be indicated: perhaps there exists a metastable particle of enormous mass, created at the time of the big bang, and we are seeing its decay products. Either case is very interesting.

Our group consists of a postdoc, graduate and undergraduate students, and myself. We are building apparatus, taking data in Utah, and analyzing these data to study the high energy cosmic rays.

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/hex/HIRES.html

[I Have A Dream]

1. Sounds like extremely exciting work. I'm glad that they're doing this.

Thanks, OB!

[rumpel]

2. it would feel better if they did not think it is "decay matter"

:)

[cassiepriam]

3. Wow, this is fascinating. This is the basis of astrology.

We are constantly being hit with cosmic energy which influences us. We feel it most strongly on the day and time of our birth.

I do not think they are going to find the energy coming from one source. I do not think it is only decay matter from the big bang. I think the cosmic energy is going to come from multiple astrophysical sources.

(I think by decay products they mean that it is very old energy, not being created at this time, but left over from the big bang. Which spiritually, astrological, and astronomically is the story of creation for this galaxy. And of course that is a primary source of energy for us.)