Dr. Kenneth Hicks
“One of the many things we can be thankful for this weekend is the perfect environment that Earth has provided for life, and the hope that humanity will have the vision to keep it safe,” writes Dr. Kenneth Hicks, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Ohio University, in the Columbus Dispatch.
Although many people are not aware of it, Earth’s atmosphere provides a thick blanket of protection from cosmic rays.
“Cosmic ray” might sound like some sort of alien weapon, but it’s simply a natural effect that refers to high-energy particles, such as protons and electrons, that bombard Earth from outer space.
These particles come from sources such as supernova explosions or other highly energetic astrophysical events, and come at us from all directions. Some of the low-energy cosmic rays come from our sun, due to sunspot activity or other surface eruptions. But the really high-energy cosmic rays come from outside our solar system.
A detector that can measure the energy of cosmic rays with unprecedented precision is attached to the International Space Station. It is called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS. New, surprising results from the detector were recently published.
Read the article: “Astronomy: Carving up some questions about cosmic rays.”
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