INVESTIGADORES
SCIUTTO Sergio Juan
artículos
Título:
Nature and origin of ultra high-energy cosmic rays
Autor/es:
THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO
Revista:
Europhysics News
Editorial:
European Physical Society
Referencias:
Año: 2012 vol. 43 p. 24 - 27
ISSN:
1432-1092
Resumen:
The Earth is exposed to a permanent rain of cosmic particles from outer space [1]. Most ofthe particles are fully ionised atomic nuclei, moving with relativistic energies. The bulk ofthem with energies up to 1017 eV originate within our Milky Way. They are most likelyaccelerated in supernova remnants. Some particles have a thousand times higherenergies, i.e. around 1020 eV. This corresponds to the kinetic energy of a tennis ball with amass of 50 g and a velocity of 90 km/h. In the tennis ball the energy is distributed betweenabout 1024 atomic nuclei, while in cosmic rays the energy is concentrated on a singlenucleus. This illustrates the immense energies of the highest-energy particles in theUniverse. They exceed the energies reached in terrestrial, man made accelerators (likethe Large Hadron Collider LHC in Geneva) by a factor of a hundred million.
