Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Noonan
Cosmic ray collisions producing 'any' sort of reaction should be recorded if possible in case there is information obtainable from them. Most telescopes are not configured to view the edge of the atmosphere so it is unlikely to be an area of much competition. Cosmic Rays hit an area of the human hand at a rate of about one a second at the earth's surface so numbers of events is not a problem.
So is the reaction like grand scale Cerenkov radiation viewed from the one point of impact for each cosmic ray event. The point is do all the components have to be measured or can an extrapolation from a limited set of data be used to determine what sort of particle is produced.
If just enough big stuff showed up alright and the hunt is only for the Higgs Boson ... it means if the Astronomers can focus their instruments they have a five or six month lead on the particle accelerator boys.
|
Hmm, I think you're confused. The thousands of tonnes of measuring equipment we have in CERN isn't for show, you can't measure the kind of detail we're looking for with the many, many Cerenkov detectors that are currently scouring our atmosphere all over the world, and as I said earlier the atmosphere makes it impossible to gather much data from the primary collision which starts the whole process.