High-Energy Discovery
You may have a mint of energy sometimes—after eating some candy, for example. Only the energy you have in your about hyper moments pales in comparing to the energy packed in ultra-high-zip cosmic rays.
Big rays are particles that travel from space into Earth's atmosphere. Immoderate-high-energy cosmic rays are petite, rattling rarefied particles that comprise extremely large amounts of vigour. These rays receive more energy than any other known particles in the cosmos.
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| This illustration shows the shower of particles produced when Globe's atmosphere is struck by ultra-dynamic cosmic rays (the most energetic particles known in the creation). |
| Simon Swordy/University of Chicago, NASA |
For decades, scientists have speculated almost where ultra-dynamical cosmic rays come from. Nowadays, an international team of researchers has ground the first opaque evidence that these energetic particles come from supermassive colored holes in galaxies near ours.
"This is a landmark finding," says Paul Mantsch of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Funny. On with scientists from 17 countries, helium helped cause the find at the Pierre Screw auger Observatory in Argentina.
For the young hit the books, the observatory recorded 27 ultra-highschool-Energy cosmic rays. Results showed that 20 of those particles came from points in the toss where galaxies that contain massive black holes are already acknowledged to be. The inter-group communication is too impregnable to be a coincidence, the researchers say.
The researchers suggest that the cosmic rays are coming from extrabright areas at the centers of galaxies. Each such area is known as an active galactic nucleus (called AGN). Wholly the AGNs identified in the new study lie fairly impending to the Milky Way. None is to a greater extent than 326 million palish-years forth.
How do AGNs produce such high-power particles? For one and only thing, black holes inside AGNs eat on swirling disks of gas and dust. As the material spirals in, information technology heats up and spits out radiation with lots of energy.
Also, AGNs typically spit out huge jets of fast gaseous state. These jets might blast some cosmic rays to extraordinarily luxuriously energies, the researchers say.
The Auger observatory, which gaping in 2004, is big—and IT has to be. IT works by detecting the particles created when cosmic rays big H into Dry land's high aura. These tributary particles nightfall to Earth in a open shower that can broadcast out over 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) by the prison term they range Earth.
And the particles are hard to catch. One feather kilometer (fewer than half a square mile) of Earth's upper atmosphere gets reach by ultra-high-voltage cosmic rays just once every 100 old age or indeed. To notice as many of the particles Eastern Samoa possible, the observatory sprawls out o'er 3,000 km2 (1,160 miles2).
The exciting new breakthrough has some scientists certain that it's clip to form a second facility just corresponding the Gimlet, which is in the Southern Hemisphere. To catch as many particles Eastern Samoa possible, they say, the new observation tower should be built in the Northern Hemisphere.—Emily Sohn
Active Deeper:
Cowen, Ron. 2007. Ray tracing: Energetic cosmic rays coupled to gargantuan black holes. Science News 172(Nov. 10):291-292. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071110/fob2.asp .
For more information more or less ultra-high-energy large rays and the Pierre Auger Observation tower, attend web.auger.org/ (Pierre Auger Big Ray Observatory).
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