Cosmic rays tagged posts

The MMS satellites encounter a shock wave that forms when a fast wind of charged particles from the Sun slams into Earth’s magnetic field. Credit: APS/Carin Cain

In a new study researchers at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics have used measurements from NASA’s MMS (Magnetospheric MultiScale) satellites to reveal that there are ripples, or surface waves, moving along the surface of shocks in space. Such ripples in shocks can affect how plasma is heated and are potential sites of particle acceleration.

Most visible matter in the Universe consists of ionized gas known as plasma. Shock waves in plasmas form around planets, stars and supernovas. Shocks in supernova explosions are thought to be the main source of cosmic rays – very high energy charged particles from space...

Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? Credit: © cosmicvue / Fotolia: Elements of this image furnished by NASA

Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That’s the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called “space brain.” UCI’s Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles – much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights – causes significant long-term brain damage in test rodents, resulting in cognitive impairments and dementia.

“This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a 2-3 year round trip to Mars,” said Prof Limoli, UCI’s School of Medicine...

Vast bubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere, was formed by the explosive death of one or more of the cluster of massive stars inside the bubble. Cosmic rays reaching Earth are created and accelerated by similar explosions. Credit: Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Composite by Travis Rector of the University of Alaska Anchorage

Supernova exploded in our ‘galactic neighborhood’ within the last few million years Most of the cosmic rays arriving at Earth from our galaxy come from nearby clusters of massive stars, according to new observations from the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft...

A prototype station of AugerPrime: Every water-Cherenkov detector containing 12,000 l of water is extended by a four-square-meter scintillation detector. Credit: Pierre Auger Collaboration

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, an international large-scale experiment to study cosmic rays, will be continued until 2025 and extended to “AugerPrime”. The observatory will be upgraded with new scintillation detectors for a more detailed measurement of gigantic air showers. This is required to identify cosmic objects that accelerate atomic particles up to highest energies.

The Pierre Auger Observatory in the province of Mendoza/Argentina is the world’s biggest and best known project for studying high-energy cosmic rays...