positron
jhalper | March 18, 2014Today’s new articles involve flow: the flow of positrons through the Universe and the flow of particles around the tiny cilia of corals. They involve beauty and mystery, as well. The particle flow, imaged in brilliant colors, won first place in the photography category of the 2013 Science/National Science Foundation International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
And positrons – the anti-matter opposites of electrons – have been found in large numbers flowing in near-Earth space. Weizmann Institute research points to an answer to one riddle: Why did a satellite monitoring…
esiegel | December 6, 2013"The results of my observation are best explained by the assumption that a radiation of very great penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above." -Victor Hess
You might think of the largest and most powerful particle accelerators in the world -- places like SLAC, Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider -- as the source of the highest energies we'll ever see. But everything we've ever done hear on Earth has absolutely nothing on the natural Universe itself! For this week's Ask Ethan, let's take a look at the simple question of our reader David Hurn, who asks:
Ever since I was a young…
esiegel | April 3, 2013"On what can we now place our hopes of solving the many riddles which still exist as to the origin and composition of cosmic rays?" -Victor Francis Hess
We've come a tremendously long way in our understanding of the Universe, but there are plenty of mysteries still to be revealed. Way back in the late 1800s, we noticed that there was an unaccounted-for excess in the amount of ionization in the upper atmosphere, something that our Sun and Earth, by themselves, couldn't explain.
Victor Francis Hess -- the originator of the quote atop -- decided to go see for himself, and conducted a series of…