From Wikipedia -- Cosmic Rays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
Cosmic rays are immensely high-energy radiation, mainly
originating outside the Solar System. They may produce
showers of secondary particles that penetrate and impact the
Earth's atmosphere and sometimes even reach the surface.
Composed primarily of high-energy protons and atomic nuclei,
they are of mysterious origin. Data from the Fermi space
telescope (2013) has been interpreted as evidence that a
significant fraction of primary cosmic rays originate from
the supernovae of massive stars. However, this is not
thought to be their only source. Active galactic nuclei
probably also produce cosmic rays.
Track Cosmic Rays with Smartphone App
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/track-cosmic-rays-with-smartphone-app/
Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones
http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2895
Cosmic ray particle shower? There's an app for that.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/cosmic-ray-particle-shower-theres-an-app-for-that/
Every second, the Earth is being struck by cosmic rays, high
energy particles that slam into the atmosphere.
Understanding where they come from and how they're generated
could provide information about some of the most energetic
processes in the Universe. But Earth's atmosphere protects
us from them, ensuring that they don't make it to the
surface. Instead, we have to look for the shower of photons
and particles that the cosmic rays create when they hit the
atmosphere.
Even large detectors, however, only capture a few traces of
the high energy particles that reach the Earth, meaning that
careful studies of their origin can take years, possibly
even decades. So some researchers decided it might be
possible to take advantage of a large population of
non-specialized detectors that are pre-positioned all over
the world: cell phone cameras.
The researchers from the University of California have
drafted a paper in which they describe testing whether a
smartphone camera can detect high energy photons and
particles of the sort produced by cosmic rays. Testing with
radioactive isotopes of radium, cobalt, and cesium showed
that the detector easily picked up gamma rays (and you
didn't even have to point the phones at the source!). They
also put a phone inside a lead box and showed that they
could detect high energy particles. Finally, they took a
phone up on a commercial flight and were able to obtain a
particle track across the detector.
Cosmic ray observatory to expand
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-cosmic-ray-observatory.html
The expansion will allow the next step aimed at identifying
what objects in space produce ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays -
subatomic particles so energetic that just one would feel
like a lead brick if it hit your foot or a fast-pitched
baseball to the skull. Ouch!
The Standard Model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory
concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear
interactions, as well as classifying all the subatomic
particles known. It was developed throughout the latter half
of the 20th century, as a collaborative effort of scientists
around the world.[1] The current formulation was finalized
in the mid-1970s upon experimental confirmation of the
existence of quarks. Since then, discoveries of the top
quark (1995), the tau neutrino (2000), and more recently the
Higgs boson (2013), have given further credence to the
Standard Model.
Every Particle that we have ever detected has been
replicated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). So we expect
that every particle is created in cosmic ray collisions.
Cosmic Ray Collisions are 6-8 orders of magnitude more
energetic than the LHC can muster.
Special Relativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
Time Dilation of Moving Particles
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation_of_moving_particles
Cosmic Muons
Let me illustrate time dilation AND length contraction with
cosmic muons.
sam.wormley@gmail.com