Groundbreaking For $18 million Cosmic Ray Observatory

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<b>Groundbreaking For $18 million Cosmic Ray Observatory</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br /><i>Aug. 28 ceremony in Central Utah for Japanese-American telescope array</i><br /><br />A groundbreaking ceremony will be held 9 a.m. MDT Saturday Aug. 28 in the desert southwest of Delta, Utah, for the Telescope Array – a Japanese and American cosmic ray observatory designed to find the source of the most energetic particles in the universe.<br /><br />“This is the first step towards implementation of an $18 million cosmic ray project to resolve the puzzling mysteries of the highest-energy cosmic rays,” says Kai Martens, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah.<br /><br />Pierre Sokolsky, the university’s physics chairman, says previous research in Japan and the United States – including the university’s High-Resolution Fly’s Eye observatory at Dugway Proving Ground – “uncovered a mystery with regard to the highest-energy cosmic ray particles.”<br /><br />“We don’t know where they are coming from,” Sokolsky says. “We don’t know why they are here. This groundbreaking is a guarantee there will be tremendous new data to shed light on this mystery.” <br /><br />The groundbreaking ceremony atop Black Rock Mesa in Millard County is for the first of three “fluorescence detectors” to be built on hilltops. The other two will be built later on Long Ridge and between the Drum and Little Drum Mountains.<br /><br />Each of the three fluorescence detectors will consist of a building with garage-type doors that open to reveal 12 sets of mirrors, each consisting of 16 segments. The mirrors will detect faint blue flashes in the night sky caused when cosmic rays hit atmospheric gas molecules.<br /><br />In addition to the three hilltop fluorescence detectors, the Telescope Array also will include a “ground array” of 576 scintillation detectors sitting on 2-foot-tall steel tables that will be scattered i