ANTARIKSA — Cosmic rays rain down on Earth non-stop and can be a natural cause of disasters in the digital era and life. What are cosmic rays? Let’s discuss it.
Cosmic rays are atomic fragments from outside the solar system that rain down on Earth. They flare up at almost the speed of light and are thought to be the cause of electronic problems in satellites and other machines.
Discovered in 1912, coinciding with the presence of the Islamic organization Muhammadiyah in Indonesia, many things about cosmic rays are still a mystery to this day. One of the main ones is their origin.
Most scientists suspect that the origin of cosmic rays is related to supernovae (star explosions). But the challenge is that the origin of cosmic rays appears uniform to observatories that scan the entire sky over many years.
Also read: Photo of lightning flashes from dead stars, emitting cosmic shock waves
A significant leap forward in cosmic ray science occurred in 2017, when the Pierre Auger Observatory looked at the sky over 3,000 square kilometers of western Argentina. At that time, he studied the arrival trajectories of 30,000 cosmic particles.
It was concluded that there were differences in how often cosmic rays arrived at Earth, depending on where scientists were looking. “While their origins remain murky, knowing where to look is the first step in knowing where they come from,” the researchers said. The results have been published in Science.
Cosmic rays can even be used for applications outside of astronomy. In November 2017, using cosmic rays, a research team discovered a possible void in the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built around 2560 BC.
The researchers discovered this cavity using muon tomography, which examines cosmic rays and their penetration through solid objects.
Discovery of Cosmic Rays
Although cosmic rays were only discovered in the 1900s, scientists knew something mysterious was happening as early as the 1780s. That’s when the French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb, who was famous for having the unit of electric charge, observed that an electrically charged ball suddenly and mysteriously no longer had a charge.
At that time, air was considered an insulator and not a conductor of electricity. However, with more research, scientists discovered that air can conduct electricity if its molecules are charged or ionized. This most often occurs when molecules interact with charged particles or X-rays.
Also Read: NASA Completes Plans to Create a New Cosmic Map with the SPHEREx Telescope
But where these charged particles came from was still a mystery at that time. In fact, attempts to block attacks with large amounts of lead have been unsuccessful.
On August 7, 1912, physicist Victor Hess flew a balloon 5,300 meters high. He found three times more ionizing radiation up there than on Earth. This means that the radiation must come from outer space.
2024-01-04 05:11:00
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