The helicopter was flying excessive by means of the evening sky with its door barely ajar. Johannes Eser and Matthew Rodencal had been within the again controlling a laser declaring by means of the hole. They aimed in direction of a balloon 35 kilometres above them and fired.
It appears like a scene from a spy film, however Eser and Rodencal, then on the Colorado College of Mines, had been truly testing a plan to identify ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, probably the most energetic particles ever found. They stream throughout the universe earlier than slamming into our ambiance and emitting a tiny flash of sunshine. The laser was alleged to mimic that flash.
This twilight helicopter experience occurred almost a decade in the past, however is a part of a saga that goes again to not less than 1991. In October that yr, we detected the one most energetic particle ever seen. It had the kinetic power of a bowling ball dropped from shoulder peak, crammed right into a subatomic-sized package deal. It rapidly turned often called the “Oh-My-God particle” and, naturally sufficient, scientists had been determined to know the place it got here from.
Since then, we now have noticed many related particles. Enormous ground-based detectors have supplied us with maps of the place they could come from, along with a shortlist of the intense cosmic objects that would produce them. However reality be instructed, we nonetheless don’t have all of the solutions. That’s the reason scientists now wish to take the cosmic ray hunt into the ambiance – and finally into house – in an effort to unravel the thriller as soon as and for all.
This story actually started with one other balloon in 1911. At the moment, physicist Victor Hess climbed right into a …