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What are cosmic rays? What about "ultra-high energy" ones?
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Click
here for an
introduction to cosmic rays and the history of their discovery. If, like
us, you're really after the highest energy sort, go straight
here.
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How can we tell when they hit and where they come from?
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Victor Hess first discovered that cosmic rays were cosmic -- coming from
the skies above us instead of from the Earth. Try his
balloon ride experiment for yourself, then come back here.
CHICOS looks for showers of many particles that are set off when one
high-energy cosmic ray hits the atmosphere. Check out
how to catch a particle shower and
try timing some cosmic ray hits to tell where they came
from.
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Where are the CHICOS detectors?
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CHICOS is the largest operating array in the northern hemisphere. Visit our
school sites web page to see
our detectors across a map of the Los Angeles area.
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Exactly what's in one of these detector sites?
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Pyramid-shaped CHICOS "shmoos" detect cosmic ray shower particles passing
through, and those hits are recorded by a computer. To see how it's all
set up, click here.
Our shmoos are more commonly called scintillator detectors.
You can read more details
here about how they work.
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How do you pick out just the ultra-high energy cosmic rays?
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The CHICOS
user manual explains
how a computer program records particle "hits" and sorts through for ones that
might come from a high-energy shower.
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Have you detected any ultra-high energy cosmic rays? Can I see some data?
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Students at CHICOS schools can work with all the data we collect. To see some
of our most interesting events and try analyzing them on your own, click
here.
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Interested in more CHICOS-related activities and reading? Keep scrolling
down to our table of links for student researchers.
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