Naked Universe of Ana

Cosmic Rays: The Universe's Largest Collider

Added 2024-11-06 00:05:08 +0000 UTC

When we think of colliders, we immediately imagine installations like the Large Hadron Collider, where particles are accelerated to enormous speeds. Particles collide, creating conditions close to those that existed during the Big Bang. But did you know that we have a natural collider that has been operating in space for billions of years? These are cosmic rays.

The Large Hadron Collider accelerates protons to energies of about 6.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV). One TeV is about the energy of a flying mosquito, but the collider packs it into a single particle, which is smaller than an atom. This is a very high density. However, space has created its own "accelerator" with much more impressive capabilities.

Cosmic rays are particles accelerated to energies of the order of 10²⁰ electron volts (EV), which is almost 10 million times greater than the possible energies in our terrestrial colliders.
A very fast mosquito... damn it...

When these particles collide with molecules in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, they create a cascade of new particles, similar to what happens in colliders(2d pic). Only here the energy of collisions can reach values that humanity is not yet able to reproduce artificially. By the way, I'm not even sure that this is possible on Earth. It would have to be a very large installation.

In fact, space offers us experiments of a scale and power that are impossible to recreate on Earth, turning cosmic rays into our natural "collider of the Universe". But catching them is not very easy. I'll tell you about this next time!

Pic credit: CERN