History of The Fly's Eye Event

Two mirrors within the University of Utah's High Resolution Fly's Eye cosmic ray observatory. (Credit: Image  From University of Utah)

Most understand my curiosity with what is happening naturally around us in terms of High Energy Cosmic Events ( It should be stressed that the energy required to move these particles this fast is enormous. Millions of times more energy per particle than humans have been able to create. See- Closure).

The highest energy particle ever observed was detected by the Fly's Eye in 1991. With an energy of 3.5 x 10²⁰eV (or 56J), the particle, probably a proton or a light nucleus, had 108 times more energy than particles produced in the largest earth-bound accelerators. See: Wayback Machine

So for me it is an interesting confirmation about what scientists do with regard to trying to understand these events. How much energy is involved and whether we can create models with which to understand the decay products that are created from.

The highest-energy cosmic ray ever detected was observed on October 15, 1991 by the Fly's Eye cosmic ray detector in Utah, USA. The detector is located in the desert in Dugway Proving Grounds 75 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The Fly's Eye detects cosmic rays by observing the light that they cause when they strike the atmosphere. When an extremely high-energy cosmic ray enters the atmosphere, it collides with an atomic nucleus and starts a cascade of charged particles that produce light as they zip through the atmosphere. The charged particles of a cosmic ray air shower travel together at very nearly the speed of light, so the Utah detectors see a fluorescent spot move rapidly along a line through the atmosphere. By measuring how much light comes from each stage of the air shower, one can infer not only the energy of the cosmic ray but also whether it was more likely a simple proton or a heavier nucleus. See: The Fly's Eye Event

Animation of air shower detection in the Auger Engineering Array

See Also:

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory

Lawrence Krauss - Debate in Stockholm, 2013

A discussion about the definition of nothing. And the relation of philosophy and theology to science. Attendees are Lawrence M Krauss, Bengt Gustafsson, Åsa Wikforss, Stefan Gustavsson and Ulrika Engström. Moderator: Christer SturmarkLawrence Krauss - Debate in Stockholm, 2013

See:

• Quantum Gravity in the Cosmic Microwave Background? 
• Using Cosmology to Establish the Quantization of Gravity
• A Short Primer on Gravity Waves

A Deeper Search for Building Blocks of Nature

National High Magnetic Field Laboratory

The strange properties of superconducting materials called “cuprates” (bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide is shown here), which cannot be described by known quantum mechanical methods, may correspond to properties of black holes in higher dimensions.

According to modern quantum theory, energy fields permeate the universe, and flurries of energy in these fields, called “particles” when they are pointlike and “waves” when they are diffuse, serve as the building blocks of matter and forces. But new findings suggest this wave-particle picture offers only a superficial view of nature’s constituents. See:

Signs of a Stranger, Deeper Side to Nature’s Building Blocks 

By: Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine, July 1, 2013

Abdus Salam Movie – The Dream of Symmetry

The movie presents the extraordinary figure of Abdus Salam of Pakistan, who not only was an outstanding scientist but also a generous humanitarian and a valuable person. His rich and busy life was an endless quest for symmetry, that he pursued in the universe of physical laws and in the world of human beings.See:Abdus Salam Movie – The Dream of Symmetry

See Also:

• Abdus Salam Movie – The Dream of Symmetry
• Exploring Matter At the Dawn of Time

Nima Arkani-Hamed Lectures

Nima Arkani-Hamed on developments in Physics and future vision

The Salam Lecture Series 2012, with a week-long series of lectures by renowned theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed. Giving his audience a panoramic view of 400 years of physics in his first lecture, Arkani-Hamed provided insights into the various concepts that have dominated the world of fundamental physics at different points in history. "Everything that we have learned [over the past 400 years] can be subsumed with a basic slogan, and the slogan is that of unification," he said. "More and more disparate phenomena turn out to be different aspects of the same thing." "Physics," he stressed "forces you to remove artificial distinction between disciplines.

See Also:

• Nima Arkani-Hamed Lecture: Day 1
• Nima Arkani-Hamed Lecture: Day 2 
• Nima Arkani-Hamed Lecture: Day 5
• The Amplituhedron
• Guest Post: Lance Dixon on Calculating Amplitudes

Exploring Matter At the Dawn of Time

Physicist Paul Sorensen describes discoveries made at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory. At RHIC, scientists from around the world study what the universe may have looked like in the first microseconds after its birth, helping us to understand more about why the physical world works the way it does - from the smallest particles to the largest stars. See: Exploring Matter at the Dawn of Time and RHIC

Detailed Characterization of Jets in Heavy Ion Collisions Using Jet Shapes and Jet Fragmentation Functions

The CMS detector has excellent capabilities for studying high-pT jets formed in heavy ion collisions. Previous CMS analyses have characterized the energy loss of hard-scattered partons traversing the medium produced in such collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.76 TeV using the momentum imbalance of di-jet and photon-jet events. In this paper, the fragmentation properties of inclusive jets with pT,jet>100~GeV/c in PbPb collisions are characterized by measuring differential and integated jet shapes, as well as charged particle fragmentation functions. A data sample of PbPb collisions collected in 2011 at a center of mass energy of sNN−−−√=2.76~TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of Lint=140 μb−1 is used. The results for PbPb collisions as a function of collision centrality are compared to reference distributions based on pp data collected at the same collision energy. For both PbPb and pp collisions, jets are reconstructed with the anti-kT clustering algorithm with a resolution parameter of 0.3 and using ``Particle Flow'' objects that combine tracking and caloritmetry information. The jet shapes and fragmentation functions are measured for reconstructed charged particles with \pt>1~GeV/c within the jet cone. For the most central collisions indications of a broadening of the differential jet shape in PbPb collisions are observed, as well as a significant rise of the PbPb/pp fragmentation function ratio for the softest fragmentation products with pT<3~GeV/c. See: Detailed Characterization of Jets in Heavy Ion Collisions Using Jet Shapes and Jet Fragmentation Functions

See Also:

•  public page of the CMS results
• "Whatever happened to AdS/CFT and the Quark Gluon Plasma?"

Hubble Movie Theater: Revelation

Take a thrill ride through 15 years of Hubble images, starting with Hubble’s first picture and ending with its anniversary image of the Whirlpool Galaxy. In less than three minutes, 800 Hubble images flash over the screen, sometimes as fast as 60 pictures per second.See:HUBBLE Site

PI director Neil Turok’s welcome speech

See Also: Perimeter Institute and the crisis in modern physics

Catching Black Holes on the Fly

Black Holes Shine for NuSTAR Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's black-hole-hunter spacecraft, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has "bagged" its first 10 supermassive black holes. The mission, which has a mast the length of a school bus, is the first telescope capable of focusing the highest-energy X-ray light into detailed pictures. See: Catching Black Holes on the Fly

See:

• NuSTAR: the Nuclear Spectroscopic Array(PDF)
• The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array Mission - NuSTAR