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Cosmic Rays, Still an Enigma

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Cosmic Rays, Still an Enigma _ PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY Cosmic Rays, Still an Enigma Analysis of the origin and identity of highest-energy particles moves forward and poses further difficult questions Carlos Fioravanti N A Y A MIGUEL BOY 120 _ SPECIAL EDITION FAPESP 50 YEARS mong the news items circulated by State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Reuters international news agen- coordinator of the São Paulo team. Of the nearly cy on November 8, 2007 was an ar- 450 authors of scientific articles referring to data ticle entitled, “Cosmic Rays Believed obtained from the observatory, 30 are Brazilian, to Start in Black Holes.” On the same and 19 of these are from the state of São Paulo. Aday, the British magazine The Economist aban- Through an international collaboration that now doned its customary caution with the headline, includes some 500 physicists from 90 institutions “They Came from Outer Space: A 40-year-old in 19 countries, construction on the observatory Mystery is Solved,” in reference to the possi- began ten years ago at the foot of the Andes on a ble origin of those particles. The findings from semi-desert plain on the outskirts of Malargüe the work of an international team of physicists in northwestern Argentina. The physicists began and engineers at the Pierre Auger Observatory to collect data in January 2004 during the con- in Argentina had enormous repercussion. The struction phase, which was completed in 2008. Auger website chose for publication 65 articles The rate of correlation between cosmic rays from newspapers and magazines from around and active galactic nuclei, which was 69% in 2007, the world to report the news, details of which fell to approximately 40% and stabilized at that appeared in the lead article in Science magazine level in the following years. During that time, the the following day. The mystery, however, has still surface detectors and telescopes detected more not been unraveled. particles, but the rate is still higher than the 21% Four years later, there are still signs that active attributable to pure chance. Unlike particle ac- galactic nuclei, where black holes are formed, celerator physicists, who can produce collisions A plain at the foot of may really be the source of ultrahigh-energy cos- between protons whenever they wish, the physi- the Andes: an ideal 19 place to capture mic rays, above 10 electron volts (eV). “The sig- cists at Pierre Auger have to wait until they ar- particles coming nal is still there, but weaker,” said Carola Dobrig- rive from the sky. Each year, only a few dozen of from space keit Chinellato, a professor of physics at Brazil’s the highest-energy cosmic rays reach the top of PESQUISA FAPESP _ 121 the Earth’s atmosphere. Each of these two independent methods of observa- (CBPF) in Rio de Janeiro and current cosmic rays traverses the atmosphere tion. Before that time they were used coordinator for Brazil’s participation at and interacts with the nuclei of atoms separately in smaller observatories like the Auger site. Escobar has been work- and molecules of air, producing an at- the Fly’s Eye, which operated in the ing as an invited researcher at Fermilab mospheric shower made up of billions United States from 1981 to 1992 with in Chicago since April 2011. of particles. Some of these particles will 67 telescopes, and the Akeno Giant Air reach the 1,660 surface detectors, the so- Shower Array (AGASA) in Japan, with RARE raYS called Cherenkov tanks, each of which 111 surface detectors. “A number of in- French physicist Pierre Victor Auger holds 12,000 liters of highly purified wa- novative details from the original de- identified the showers of particles in ter. The tanks’ sensors detect the bluish sign are now proving valuable,” notes a historic experiment conducted in light emitted in the water when electro- Carlos Escobar, the physics professor at the Alps in 1938. So many years later, magnetic particles traverse the tanks Unicamp who coordinated the Brazilian the composition of the highest-energy (see illustration on the following page). team and handled negotiations with the cosmic rays remains unknown. The construction firms working on the ob- principal reason for this is that they are cattered over 3,300 square kilome- servatory in Argentina starting with the quite rare. The higher the energy, the ters—double the size of the city of initial planning meetings. He was one of rarer the particles. “When the energy SSão Paulo—the surface detectors two Brazilian representatives, along with increases tenfold, the number of cosmic operate in combination with 27 fluo- Ronald Shellard, a researcher from the rays that reach the Earth with energy rescence telescopes, known as Fly’s Brazilian Center for Physics Research above that value is one hundred times Eyes. These telescopes are capable of lower,” Chinellato said. “The recording the faint light emitted by ni- highest-energy cosmic rays trogen molecules in the upper atmos- have energy above 1019 eV, phere when they are excited by particles and only a few of them per from the shower produced by a cosmic Only one highest-energy square kilometer reach the ray that has reached the Earth. Because Earth each year. For parti- they are so sensitive, the fluorescence particle per square cles with energy above 1020 detectors, installed on four buildings, kilometer per century eV, the rate drops to one par- work only in the dark on moonless ni- ticle per square kilometer ghts, while the tanks capture shower reaches the Earth per century.” particles all the time. According to Chinellato, The Pierre Auger facility is the site in the analyses of ultrahigh- of the first experiment to integrate the energy cosmic rays detected at the Auger Observatory, the result of the correlation with active ga- lactic nuclei strengthens the hypothesis Ground detectors that cosmic rays are protons, or hydro- gen nuclei. “The rationale behind this The Pierre Auger Observatory covers 3,300 square kilometers, interpretation is that the cosmic rays double the size of the city of São Paulo and 10 times larger than Paris were likely to have been minimally de- flected by the magnetic fields that they traversed, and that therefore they re- tained angular proximity with their pos- sible sources,” she said. “Had they been nuclei of heavier elements such as iron, for example, they would have undergone greater deflection in the magnetic fields, which would eliminate that correlation.” But things are not quite so simple. Compartments with the fluorescence Observations of the development of telescopes particle showers by the fluorescence Surface telescopes and comparisons with theo- detectors retical predictions indicate that cosmic rays—at least some of them—could be heavier nuclei such as iron, i.e., blocks of 26 protons and 30 neutrons. “That interpretation is fairly dependent on the validity of the theoretical models in the description of the development SOURCE: PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY of the showers,” Chinellato observes. 122 _ SPECIAL EDITION FAPESP 50 YEARS Waiting for particles The Pierre Auger Observatory combines two independent ways of detecting cosmic rays 1 When they reach the Earth, cosmic rays collide with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere to produce a particle shower 2 3 The particles are also recorded when they react with the water in the tanks of the The collision surface detectors between the particles produces a faint blue light, 4 captured by the A central computer gathers the fluorescence data from the telescopes and telescopes surface detectors to identify the possible origin of the cosmic rays “The theoretical models are based in ger have published details of these and the observatory was being built, it didn’t part on extrapolation from observations other conclusions, and have presented seem so, but at 3,000 square kilometers— in experiments with particle accelera- potential new uses for the equipment, the current size of the observatory—it’s tors at much lower energies.” In prac- such as monitoring weather or the mo- actually too small.” tice, for now we cannot simply choose vements of tectonic plates. Built between 2002 and 2008, Pierre one conclusion over the other. Auger is the largest cosmic ray observa- To arrive at a less uncertain conclu- he total energy levels in the par- tory in operation. The area it covers is sion, physicists will have to adjust, cor- ticle collisions being analyzed are so large that even the most frantic mo- rect or expand these theoretical appro- Tabout 100 to 200 times higher torcyclist zooming between cars in the aches in order to explain the identity of than those produced in the Large Ha- city of São Paulo would be unlikely to cosmic rays. Theoretical physics does dron Collider (LHC), the world’s lar- see in one day all of the 1,660 cylindri- not explain how cosmic rays can acquire gest particle accelerator located at the cal tanks, each measuring 3.7 meters in an energy 100 million times greater than European Organization for Nuclear Re- diameter and 1 meter high, spaced 1.5 that of particles of the same type produ- search (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. km apart in the form of a triangular grid. ced in the Tevatron, the world’s most The LHC groups are also experiencing In the past two years, Escobar says, the powerful particle accelerator located at progress, setbacks and digressions in tanks have acquired more electronic de- Fermilab. In other words, the conceptu- attempting to confirm the existence of vices and, in addition to recording the DRÜM al tools are limited and the options are the so-called Higgs boson, a hypothe- light produced in the collision with the S N io T still shaky.
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