Particles Come From All Over

In my last blog post, I talked about the work that has been ongoing while the Large Hadron Collider was undergoing repairs and maintenance in preparation for turning on and producing collisions at a new higher energy starting this spring. Of course we're looking forward to what will happen with this as it will be the highest energy for an accelerator. Meanwhile, the Universe's accelerators have been bombarding us with high energy particles, low energy particles and everything in between since the beginning of time. There are lots of ways we are looking at these particles with detectors on the earth and in the sky. There are studies of gravitational waves, dark energy and dark matter. Unlike an accelerator where you control the energy, where the particles are going, and how many of them there are, there is no controlling the cosmic accelerators. You get your detector ready and then wait to see what happens.

We all know that astronomical telescopes look for "light" from stars, galaxies and the like. Visible light is one form of electromagnetic energy with a particular wavelength. There are now many telescopes that look for x-rays and other wavelength information falling out of the skies. Many of these telescopes or detectors cover large areas and are in remote places. The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory has just been completed with hundreds of water tanks on the Sierra Negra volcano at an altitude of 4,100 meters in Mexico. It will hopefully d...

Source: Science - The Huffington Post - March 4, 2015 Category: Science Source Type: news