A Single Cosmic Ray Can Cause An Air Shower Of Billions Of Particles

Cosmic rays rain down on the Earth every day . Most of them do n’t have that much of an effect , but some cause a concatenation reaction that makes an “ atmosphere shower bath , ” raining billions of particles down onto the solid ground .

When a cosmic beam hits the atmosphere it is decease to make a few alteration , but usually just a few . For all its vitality , a cosmic ray is tiny . It might , for example , hit the nucleus of a gasoline particle in the air , and the hit may make a varied bunch of hadron .

hadron are a freehanded family of speck , including protons and neutron , and also let in pions . Pions are made of a quark and an anti - quark , and are usually short - lived . These curtly - lived particles crumble and form photons energetic enough to be term gamma rays . The process slowly lose energy , in the common sense of each new particle having more or less less energy than its primogenitor . And not all the hadron and gamma ray will interact with the atmosphere in productive ways ; the absolute majority of the fourth dimension , the energy from an incoming cosmic ray disperses like a concentrated puff of wind disperses as it travels , and there ’s no substantial effect by the time we get to earth level .

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But sometimes it ’s not that simple . Sometimes the hadrons made by the initial hit have a confident or disconfirming care . These are longer - live particles , which may strike another gas pedal nucleus as they fall . Sometimes the original gas nucleus , or the cosmic re , or both , hit other flatulence nuclei and create their own burst of hadrons .

Sometimes the high - energy photons which are forge when the pions decay , interact with another nucleus , and the interaction produces an electron and a antielectron . Both the electron and the positron produce by this interaction can create photon . They are charged , and so when they overhaul another charged particle , their way of life changes . An electron passing by a positively - charge nucleus , for example , may stoop its path toward the nucleus . This change in direction slightly decrease its energy , and it recede that energy in the conformation of a photon . A traveling negatron may create a lot of photon through this physical process .

Sometimes the colliding , the creating , the decaying , the veering , and the splitting result in a shower of particles and photon roll in the hay as an air shower . Air shower can be small , or they can rain down billions of molecule of all eccentric on the earth . Because the hastiness of particle starts , grows , contact its peak , and then declines , the largest showers of particles usually are detected in the mountains , high up , before all that vim is lost . Still , the sudden fit of particles and undulation is pretty telling , and all because a cosmic ray unleash the potential of our own atmosphere .

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