This project is designed to work in tandem with a cosmic ray detector built in association with the HiSPARC project ontop of Marling school in Gloucestershir, England.
Our aim for this project is to create a relatively low cost solution that can detect, log and upload gamma ray detections in a set area. This data can then be analyzed in a number of dofferent ways, but our main goal is to perform an experiment to provide solid evidence for or against something in particle physics which has always been assumed before.
Firstly, some context. After a cosmic ray passes through the atmosphere it produces a particle shower which produces, amongst others, muon particles and gamma rays. Marling's gamma ray detector monitors the muons ommitted by this shower and excludes the muons created by background radiation, each detected muon represents a cosmic ray which is the logged by the detector. The universal hypothesis is that the gamma rays and muons should reach the surface at the same time, which seems logical however is complicated by the fact that the muon's lifespan is not large enough to reach the surface if it was not for einsteins theory of spacial relativity allowing time dilation for fast moving particles. Since this has always been assumed to be true there is not yet any experimental proof for or aginst the idea that the gamma rays are reaching the surface in a similar time.
This gamma ray detector has an aim of solving this by detecting a large sample of gamma rays on the same level as the cosmic ray detector and finding gamma rays which have been detected within <200 nanoseconds of a cosmic ray. If we find multiple examples of this we can saythat we have found the first experimental proof of our hypothesis.
Asa final point, Cosmic rays are beginning to become more and more relevant to the computer science industry / community as they are a key factor in predicting space weather such as solar flares which in some cases can be strong enough to fry large swathes of electronics across the globe. It is becoming more and more likely one of these events will occur each day and so it is of increasing importance that we begin to accurately predict and prepare for these situations.
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