today's APOD (14 August) about cosmic rays was interesting; about 5-6 weeks ago at around 4am one of our smoke alarms beeped for a couple of seconds for apparently no reason at all ( but it still it got me out of bed in a big hurry)
I wondered why, and the thought came to me at the time that as it's an ionization type detector maybe something ionized the air in the detector, could it be cosmic rays?
Is such a thing possible or is this a crazy theory?
Charles
Cosmic Rays and effects (APOD 14 Aug 2006)
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Charles_ebm
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Cosmic Rays and effects (APOD 14 Aug 2006)
Charles, Newcastle on Tyne, UK
It's certainly quite possible that a cosmic ray shower triggered the smoke alarm. We get a fair bit of cosmic ray activity, even down at sea level, and it only increases as you get higher in altitude. The articles I've read quote varying intensities of cosmic rays at sea level, usually something on the order of one cosmic ray particle per square centimetre per minute.
They've been known to mess up aircraft instrumentation, and even cause spontaneous computer crashes when they manage to corrupt bits stored in RAM.
Cosmic rays also apparently make up about half of our normal background radiation levels here on Earth.
Astronauts in orbit are obviously more vulnerable to cosmic rays, being above the protection of the atmosphere. Apparently there've been reports of astronauts being woken from their sleep, by the bright flash of a cosmic ray particle triggering a particle shower inside their eyeball.
Possibly the most mind-bending thing I've heard about cosmic rays is the highest-energy cosmic ray particle ever detected. It was apparently a single proton, which was travelling so fast that it had a kinetic energy on the same order as that of a major-league fastball (the number quoted was 1x10^22 electron volts, or 1600 joules).
Here is a nice article from IBM discussing cosmic ray intensity on Earth.
They've been known to mess up aircraft instrumentation, and even cause spontaneous computer crashes when they manage to corrupt bits stored in RAM.
Cosmic rays also apparently make up about half of our normal background radiation levels here on Earth.Astronauts in orbit are obviously more vulnerable to cosmic rays, being above the protection of the atmosphere. Apparently there've been reports of astronauts being woken from their sleep, by the bright flash of a cosmic ray particle triggering a particle shower inside their eyeball.
Possibly the most mind-bending thing I've heard about cosmic rays is the highest-energy cosmic ray particle ever detected. It was apparently a single proton, which was travelling so fast that it had a kinetic energy on the same order as that of a major-league fastball (the number quoted was 1x10^22 electron volts, or 1600 joules).
Here is a nice article from IBM discussing cosmic ray intensity on Earth.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Sorry to be a downer, but I think todays picture sets a new all-time low in the quality of visualizations in the history of APOD.
A picture of some of those enormous cosmic ray detecting stations would have been much more appealing.
For example:
http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/whatsn ... 2-SK-m.JPG
http://umdgrb.umd.edu/cosmic/Sk_boat.jpg
(ok, so maybe they are neutrino detectors... but I'm sure they're used to detect cosmic rays indirectly.. ?)
A picture of some of those enormous cosmic ray detecting stations would have been much more appealing.
For example:
http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/whatsn ... 2-SK-m.JPG
http://umdgrb.umd.edu/cosmic/Sk_boat.jpg
(ok, so maybe they are neutrino detectors... but I'm sure they're used to detect cosmic rays indirectly.. ?)
It is kind of an odd picture, I can't say I liked it terribly much when I first looked at it either.l3p3r wrote:Sorry to be a downer, but I think todays picture sets a new all-time low in the quality of visualizations in the history of APOD.
A picture of some of those enormous cosmic ray detecting stations would have been much more appealing.
For example:
http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/whatsn ... 2-SK-m.JPG
http://umdgrb.umd.edu/cosmic/Sk_boat.jpg
(ok, so maybe they are neutrino detectors... but I'm sure they're used to detect cosmic rays indirectly.. ?)
Though it seems to be a pretty decent illustration of the air-shower effect, at least.They generally try to shield neutrino detectors from cosmic rays as much as they possibly can, hence their peculiar locations, like in the bottoms of deep mine shafts. I believe they mostly use networks of surface-mounted telescopes to look for air showers, since they apparent emit a fairly characteristic pulse of ultraviolet light (Cherenkov radiation). For really energetic ones, they also use particle detectors at ground level.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Oh, but look...l3p3r wrote:Sorry to be a downer, but I think todays picture sets a new all-time low in the quality of visualizations in the history of APOD.
A picture of some of those enormous cosmic ray detecting stations would have been much more appealing.
For example:
http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/whatsn ... 2-SK-m.JPG
http://umdgrb.umd.edu/cosmic/Sk_boat.jpg
(ok, so maybe they are neutrino detectors... but I'm sure they're used to detect cosmic rays indirectly.. ?)
That's the Nile delta "getting it"... is it a coded warning to Egypt?... has the US or Israel a cosmic- ray-gun satellite in orbit?... will Iran get "the real thing"?... wow!!!... how could you have missed the message?...
