Out of the millions of cosmic particles the spacecraft collected, 36 were special.
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But in November, scientists made a truly baffling observation using the cosmic particles blasting Earth from outer space.
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But one team has weighed the Earth in a whole new way: by measuring mysterious cosmic particles that pass through it.
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Scientists theorize that when the dust was created from a dying star, it was destroyed and reformed, shaping similar cosmic particles every time.
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Neutrinos are referred to as ghostly because they are extremely volatile, or vaporous, cosmic particles that can pass through any kind of matter without changing.
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The depth is key because the more layers of dirt and rock that separate the detector from the atmosphere and space beyond, the more sheltered it will be from background noise—non-dark matter cosmic particles.
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The balloon, designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to detect ultra-high energy cosmic particles from beyond the galaxy as they penetrate the earth's atmosphere, is expected to circle the planet two or three times.
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As it moves through the inner solar system, the remnants of the comet spill out trillions of cosmic particles in its wake, and when those rocks enter Earth's atmosphere they burn up, creating a brilliant flash of light -- a phenomenon people interpret as shooting stars.
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Not only do they fly long distances and from otherwise impenetrable spots like the cores of stars at virtually the speed of light, but by not having an electrical charge they are not affected by interstellar and intergalactic magnetic fields and other influences that scramble the paths of other types of cosmic particles, like protons and electrons.
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In February 2010, it was announced that Fermi-LAT had determined that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles. This determination fulfills one of the stated missions for this project.
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Due to the very low flux of extragalactic cosmic particles received on Earth, little is known about their composition. Most estimates, based on theoretical and numerical models, predict that light atomic nuclei such as protons are the dominant particle type.
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ICE carries 13 scientific instruments to measure plasmas, energetic particles, waves, and fields. , five were known to be functional. It does not carry a camera or imaging system. Its detectors measure high energy particles such as X- and gamma-rays, solar wind, plasma and cosmic particles.
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This reaction can be induced not only by neutrino but other high energy cosmic particles, which all have different penetration depth in the crust. Therefore, a large volume of data is being accumulated during 2008–2010 from different depths of the deposit to produce reliable data.
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It is believed that the reversal is correlated to the Earth's mantle, although exactly how is still debated. Distortions to the Earth's magnetic field cause the phenomenon Aurora Borealis, commonly called the Northern Lights. The magnetic field stores energy given by cosmic particles known as solar wind, which causes the magnetic field lines to expand. When the lines contract, they release this energy, which can be seen as the Northern Lights.
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The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND) is a proposed large-scale detector designed to collect ultra-high energy cosmic particles as cosmic rays, neutrinos and photons with energies exceeding 1017 eV. This project aims at solving the mystery of their origin and the early stages of the universe itself. The proposal, formulated by an international group of researchers, calls for an array of 200,000 receivers to be placed on mountain ranges around the world.
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Terrestrial SEU arise due to cosmic particles colliding with atoms in the atmosphere, creating cascades or showers of neutrons and protons, which in turn may interact with electronic circuits. At deep sub-micron geometries, this affects semiconductor devices in the atmosphere. In space, high-energy ionizing particles exist as part of the natural background, referred to as galactic cosmic rays (GCR). Solar particle events and high-energy protons trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere (Van Allen radiation belts) exacerbate this problem.
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CTA will seek to understand the impact of high-energy particles in the evolution of cosmic systems and to gain insight into the most extreme and unusual phenomena in the Universe. CTA will search for annihilating dark matter particles and deviations from Einstein's theory of special relativity and even conduct a census of particle acceleration in the Universe. CTA will seek to address questions in and beyond astrophysics. These questions fall under three major themes of study: Understanding the Origin and Role of Relativistic Cosmic Particles, Probing Extreme Environments, Exploring Frontiers in Physics.
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The outside of the steel shell has additional 48 veto PMTs to detect Cherenkov radiation produced by incoming cosmic particles, primarily muons. The materials used in the DEAP detector were required to adhere to strict radio-purity standards to reduce background event contamination. All materials used were assayed to determine levels of radiation present, and inner detector components had strict requirements for radon emanation, which emits alpha radiation from its decay daughters. The inner vessel is coated with wavelength shifting material TPB which was vacuum evaporated onto the surface.
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Conventional definition places the boundary at a photon energy between 10 eV and 33 eV in the ultraviolet (see definition boundary section below). Typical ionizing subatomic particles found in radioactive decay include alpha particles, beta particles and neutrons. Almost all products of radioactive decay are ionizing because the energy of radioactive decay is typically far higher than that required to ionize. Other subatomic ionizing particles which occur naturally are muons, mesons, positrons, and other particles that constitute the secondary cosmic particles that are produced after primary cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere.
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Pullin is the Founding Editor of the prestigious high-impact Physical Review X (PRX) covering all physics, published by the American Physical Society, being the editor from 2011 to the present. Pullin is also one of the Managing Editors of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (covering covers specifically gravitation, astrophysics and cosmology, with topics such as general relativity, quantum gravity, cosmic particles and radiation) from 2005 to the present. Pullin is also a Member of the Editorial Board of Living Reviews in Relativity, from 2004 to present.
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One of the measurement stations of EMMA experiment situated in Pyhäsalmi mine EMMA (Experiment with MultiMuon Array) is a cosmic- ray experiment taking place in CUPP and it is still partly under construction. The experiment is a joint venture of the University of Oulu, University of Jyväskylä, University of Aarhus and the Russian Academy of Sciences. EMMA is focused on studying the composition of cosmic rays in the energy above 1 PeV- range, the so-called knee region. When a primary cosmic particle collides with the atmosphere, it decays into secondary cosmic particles creating an air shower (muons, electrons, hadrons).
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These hypotheses are complex, but many predict that the Earth would be destroyed in a time frame from seconds to millennia, depending on the theory considered. However, the fact that objects of the Solar System (e.g., the Moon) have been bombarded with cosmic particles of significantly higher energies than that of RHIC and other man made colliders for billions of years, without any harm to the Solar System, were among the most striking arguments that these hypotheses were unfounded. The other main controversial issue was a demand by critics for physicists to reasonably exclude the probability for such a catastrophic scenario.
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In 1976, it was proposed to use a thallium-rich mineral, lorándite, for detection of solar neutrino. The method relies on the 205Tl(νe,e−)205Pb reaction which has a relatively low threshold energy of 52 keV and thus relatively high efficiency. This reaction yields 205Pb isotope which has a long lifetime of 15.4 million years; it is induced not only by neutrinos, but also by other cosmic particles. They all have different penetration depth in the Earth crust, and thus analysis of the 205Pb content in a thallium-containing ore taken from different depths brings information on the neutrinos of the past millennia.
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There were three possible detector technologies being studied, the MEMPHYS, GLACIER and LENA detectors, MEMPHYS being a water-based detector, GLACIER being liquid argon and LENA liquid scintillator-based. All the detectors work by observing the faint light and electric charge produced when a neutrino particle interacts with a nucleus of the liquid inside the detector. The detectors will be based deep underground (even 1.4 km deep) to filter the noise that is developed by the atmospheric and cosmic particles that bombard everything at the surface of the Earth. These noise particles do not penetrate the Earth at that depth, but the neutrinos that interact only weakly with normal matter do.
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Before RHIC started operation, critics postulated that the extremely high energy could produce catastrophic scenarios, such as creating a black hole, a transition into a different quantum mechanical vacuum (see false vacuum), or the creation of strange matter that is more stable than ordinary matter. These hypotheses are complex, but many predict that the Earth would be destroyed in a time frame from seconds to millennia, depending on the theory considered. However, the fact that objects of the Solar System (e.g., the Moon) have been bombarded with cosmic particles of significantly higher energies than that of RHIC and other man-made colliders for billions of years, without any harm to the Solar System, were among the most striking arguments that these hypotheses were unfounded.
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The Alikhanian–Alikhanov spectrometer was a large solenoid physical instrument constructed by brothers Abraham Alikhanov and Artem Alikhanian at the Aragats scientific station in Armenia. The spectrometer was unique in the world.(in Russian) A. I. Alikhanian in the Gravitational field, by Gabriel Merzon, "7 iskusstv" Journal, #5, 2011 It had the highest amount of magnetic field (1,0x0,3x0,15 cubic meters) with the intensity up to 20 kGauss and was packed with four and five-layer proportional thin-walled counters of 4.6 mm diameter and 30–35 cm length, through which the coordinates of the trajectories of cosmic rays determined with an accuracy of about 1 mm. Spectrometer, that had a high resolution (maximum measurable pulse in the field of 20 kGauss was 150 GeV/c) was used to determine the momentum and mass of cosmic particles.
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Throughout Olinto's career, she has made theoretical and experimental contributions to astroparticle physics, including contributions to the study of the structure of neutron stars, inflationary theory, cosmic magnetic fields, the nature of dark matter, and the origin of the highest energy cosmic particles: cosmic rays, gamma-rays, and neutrinos. Olinto emerged as a leader of the science behind the 3,000 km2 Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina, built and operated by a 19-country collaboration. Her group pioneered in depth studies of the physics and astrophysics of ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) including the propagation and neutrino production of UHE nuclei and acceleration models based on newborn pulsars. Starting in 2012, Olinto served as the United States principal investigator of JEM-EUSO (Extreme Universe Space Observatory on-board of the Japanese Experiment Module of the International Space Station) mission—an international collaboration involving 16 countries to discover the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays.
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