The station allows for longterm monitoring in lieu of multiple limited-duration balloon flights, providing direct, unimpeded access to incoming cosmic rays without atmospheric interference. Seo says, “The ISS provides an excellent monitoring platform for high-energy cosmic rays.
Named “ISS-CREAM,” it will remain installed on the Japanese Experiment Module, also known as Kibo, for at least three years. A reconfigured CREAM detector is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in 2017 aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket. Since 2004, the team has flown CREAM seven times over Antarctica accumulating more than 191 days of data from altitudes as high as 120,000 feet. CREAM is able to measure the energy and direction of each incoming cosmic ray particle and identify the particle type by measuring its charge, thereby providing clues to the particles’ origin and acceleration mechanisms. By lofting the detector above 99% of Earth’s atmosphere, researchers get a better idea of what cosmic rays are like before they collide with nuclei in the air above the detector. The cosmic ray detector known as CREAM (The Cosmic-Ray Energetics and Mass investigation) has been launched to the stratosphere above Antarctica onboard long-duration helium-filled balloons. While indications of the energies of cosmic ray particles can be measured from the ground, Seo and colleagues have taken their studies to higher elevations, directly measuring particles from space before they break up in Earth’s atmosphere. “But how do natural cosmic ray accelerators pump so much energy into these particles? This is one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics.” This is more energy than we have achieved in the most powerful manmade particle accelerators.” Other, unknown cataclysmic phenomena may be at work, too, especially for the most energetic cosmic rays.Įun-Suk Seo, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland says, “Cosmic ray particles with energies as high as 10 20 electron volts have been measured on the ground. The expanding shock waves can break apart interstellar atoms and accelerate the debris to unimaginably high energies. When massive stars explode they blast most of their material into space. This perspective on extreme cosmic objects could also reveal the answers to larger fundamental questions about physics.It’s believed that the majority of cosmic rays come from supernova explosions. Using IXPE to study the polarization of cosmic X-rays could help scientists better understand the remnants of exploded stars, like black holes and neutron stars, their environments and how they produce X-rays. While waves of light can vibrate in any direction, polarized light only vibrates in one direction. Polarized light also bears the unique stamp of its source and what it passed through on the way. This is why scientists rely on X-ray telescopes in space. This light is practically encoded with the signature of what created it, but Earth’s atmosphere prevents X-rays from reaching the ground. In space, this includes powerful magnetic fields, collisions between objects, explosions, scorching temperatures and rapid rotations. X-rays are a highly energetic wavelength of light that are born from extremes. “IXPE will tell us more about the precise nature of cosmic X-ray sources than we can learn by studying their brightness and color spectrum alone.” “The launch of IXPE marks a bold and unique step forward for X-ray astronomy,” said Martin Weisskopf, IXPE’s principal investigator, in a statement. NASA is about to launch a laser demo that could revolutionize space communication Illustration of NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration communicating over laser links.
0 kommentar(er)
