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What is a "Centauro event?"
What is a "Centauro event?"
What is a "Centauro event?"
A Centauro event is a rare, high-energy particle collision that occurs in the Earth's atmosphere. It is named after the mythical creature, the Centaur, due to its appearance resembling a horse-headed humanoid.
A Centauro event is formed when a high-energy cosmic ray, such as a proton or a gamma ray, collides with an atom in the Earth's atmosphere. This collision produces a shower of particles, including neutrinos, muons, and pions, that can be detected by observatories on the ground.
Centauro events are unique because they have an extremely high center of mass energy, reaching up to 10^20 electron volts (eV). This is much higher than the energy produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator.
Studying Centauro events can provide insights into the composition and behavior of high-energy cosmic rays and other particles. It can also help us better understand the processes that occur in extreme environments, such as the atmosphere of neutron stars or supernovae explosions.
Centauro events are extremely rare, with only a handful of them being detected since they were first observed in the 1970s. It is estimated that they occur once per 10,000 cosmic ray collisions in the Earth's atmosphere.