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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary
From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Particle Accelerators/ Cosmic Rays
Message-ID: <1171@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 09:53:24 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1171
Posted: Tue Feb 11 09:53:24 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Feb-86 19:09:48 EST
References: <572@hounx.UUCP> <139@epimass.UUCP> <11782@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
Lines: 31
Keywords: cosmic rays, particle physics, cygnets
Summary: Cosmic rays don't have the luminosity to sub for accelerators

In article <11782@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins) writes:
>   If [cosmic rays are more energetic than particles in accelerators]
>why don't we build orbiting detectors and wait
>for cosmic rays to strike their targets at these extremely high energies?
>Is the density of cosmic rays too low to make this practical?
>   Sounds a lot cheaper than $1E10 for the SSC!

I have a good friend who's a particle physicist so I'm going to go out
on a limb and try to answer this.

Yes, to my knowledge the problem is luminosity or particle flux.  There
just aren't enough high energy cosmic rays to make them a good
substitute for accelerators.  And a good thing that is for those of us
living on the surface of this planet!

However, for some time high energy physics was cosmic ray physics, and
cosmic ray research goes on.  Most recently weird particles have been
coming (it is conjectured) from Cygnus X-3, a bright x-ray source some
27,000 light years from here.  Events in a proton-decay experiment seem
related to this object and due to particles hitherto undiscovered.
Likewise anamolous bursts of Cherenkov radiation in the atmosphere
(detected by an instrument in Hawaii) are tentatively associated with
Cygnus X-3.  If these results hold up one of the major particle-physics
discoveries of the 1980s will have come from cosmic rays.  And we may be
reminded once again that when you explore the unknown, then by
definition you do not know what you will find.
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
USENET:  {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary