- #1
- 7,780
- 475
http://www.symmetrymag.org/cms/?pid=1000063&printable=1 describes detection of cosmic rays with unbelievable energies:
The thought occurred to me that (if we can figure out where these particles are coming from, which appears to be a goal of the project) perhaps we should be building some big particle detectors for SkyLab rather than building bigger terrestrial particle accelerators.
AM
This is a proton with 20 joules of energy - about the same energy as a well driven golf ball in mid-flight.At 3x1020 electron volts (a 3 followed by 20 zeroes), the particle that hit the Utah sky in 1991 was 300 million times more energetic than those made by Fermilab’s Tevatron, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
The thought occurred to me that (if we can figure out where these particles are coming from, which appears to be a goal of the project) perhaps we should be building some big particle detectors for SkyLab rather than building bigger terrestrial particle accelerators.
AM