找到最新文章,Auger发现更令人迷惑的问题,最高能量宇宙射线并非都是质子,还有重原子核,这更难以解释。
按照狭义相对论,在到达地球之前,极高能原子核与微波光子碰撞将分裂,其GZK极限值远低于质子的GZK极限值。
来自 http://www.cosmomni.com:8080/display/NS/2007/07/05/A+Comedown+for+Cosmic+Rays
Cosmomni > Nature Science > 2007 > 七月 > 05 > A Comedown for Cosmic Rays
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A Comedown for Cosmic Rays
Added by Meric, last edited by Meric on 七月 05, 2007
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By Adrian Cho
ScienceNOW Daily News
An otherwise inexplicable excess in the highest energy cosmic rays crashing into Earth has been explained in the simplest
way: The excess simply doesn't exist. The new result may disappoint physicists who had perceived hints of exciting new
phenomena in the overabundance of individual subatomic particles cruising along with as much energy as a large hailstone. It
also leaves some mysteries unanswered.
Really energetic particles should hit Earth only very rarely. After all, the number of cosmic rays pelting Earth decreases
steadily as the energy of the rays increases. Above a specific energy, the rate ought to drop even faster. For example, if
the rays consist mainly of protons, then at such tremendous energies they ought to break into other subatomic particles when
they collide with photons in the afterglow of the big bang, the cosmic microwave background. That effect is known as the GKZ
cutoff and it should limit the energy of cosmic rays to about 1018 electron volts, a million times the energy achieved with
particle accelerators. But from 1990 to 2004, physicists working with the Akeno Giant Air Shower Array (AGASA) west of Tokyo
spotted roughly a dozen particles with energies 100 times higher (Science, 14 August 1998, p. 891). That excess puzzled
physicists, both because they could not explain how the rays got past the GZK cutoff or how they could gain so much energy in
the first place.
However, a group working with a different detector claimed they saw no such excess. Physicists working with the High
Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) detector at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground saw only a couple events at such energies.
Researchers suspected the discrepancy arose from the very different methods used by the detectors to study the rays. When an
ultra-high energy cosmic ray strikes the atmosphere, it creates a cascade of charged particles and light called an extensive
air shower. AGASA used an array of particle detectors on the ground to measure the showers. In contrast, HiRes used
specialized telescopes to detect the light produced when all those particles excite nitrogen molecules in the air and cause
them to fluoresce.
Now, a new gigantic cosmic ray detector that employs both techniques has settled the issue. The almost-completed Pierre Auger
Observatory on the plains of the Pampa Amarilla in western Argentina comprises more than 1200 ground detectors and 24
telescopes and covers an area of 300 square kilometers (Science, 21 June 2002, p. 2134). And the array has already collected
enough data to rule out an excess in cosmic rays above 1020 eV. "If the AGASA had been correct, then we should have seen 30
events at or above 1020 eV, and we see two," says Alan Watson, a physicist from the University of Leeds, U.K., and
spokesperson for the Auger collaboration. The team will present its results here this week at the 30th International Cosmic
Ray Conference.
Meanwhile, researchers working with HiRes, which stopped taking data in last year, say that they have definitely observed the
GZK cutoff in their final spectrum of cosmic rays. "It looks very much like what everyone has been predicting," says Pierre
Sokolsky of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "It's the classic GZK cutoff." Watson disagrees because, he says,
details of the Auger data suggest the highest energy cosmic rays aren't all protons, but also include heavier atomic nuclei,
which shouldn't be stopped by the cutoff.
Physicists still cannot explain how even a few cosmic rays reach such tremendous energy. The key to answering that question
may come in identifying exactly where in the sky the rays emanate from. Auger hasn't seen any evidence for such point sources
yet. But the experiment will likely run another decade, Watson says, and researchers have already noticed a couple of
curiosities in the sky, which he's not willing to discuss just yet.
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※※※※※※ 我的新论文《用中智学分析和改造狭义相对论》,没有被《前沿科学》采纳的文章。http://www.bjxdl.net/bbs/ViewFile.asp?FileName=20074291414414.rar
用winrar解压缩后就可以阅读 |