Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2014 Annual Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the APS
Volume 59, Number 9
Friday–Sunday, October 3–5, 2014; University Park, Pennsylvania
Session C4: Cosmic Rays, Dark Matter Searches and Original Concepts |
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Chair: Azadeh Keivani, Pennyslvania State University Room: Life Sciences Building 007 |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 10:30AM - 11:06AM |
C4.00001: Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays Invited Speaker: Jason Link Despite their discovery over 100 years ago, we are only recently beginning to understand and identify the cosmic sources of galactic cosmic rays. In this talk I will discuss what we know and what we hope to learn about the cosmic-ray source. I will focus in particular on efforts to measure cosmic rays with an atomic number Z\textgreater 30. These ultra-heavy cosmic rays are only produced in supernova explosions as a result of neutron capture and provide an excellent indicator of the nature of the cosmic-ray source. I will present data from past balloon and satellite experiments as well as the recent SuperTIGER balloon experiment which flew over Antarctica for a record 55 day flight and discuss what the future holds for ultra-heavy galactic cosmic-ray measurements. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:06AM - 11:18AM |
C4.00002: The Pierre Auger Observatory: Overview and recent results Foteini Oikonomou The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest cosmic ray detector ever built to study cosmic rays with energies $E > 10^{18}$~eV. These are the highest energy particles to have ever been observed and their study can teach us about the most extreme accelerators in the Universe as well as about hadronic interactions at unprecedentedly high center-of-mass energies. The observatory, which covers $3000~km^{2}$ in Argentina, has accumulated the world's largest data set of extensive air showers since 2004, when operation started. In this talk, I will give an overview of the experiment and summarize some of the latest results, including the status of searches for a correlation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with extragalactic astrophysical accelerators. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:18AM - 11:30AM |
C4.00003: Searching for the source of the highest energy cosmic ray detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory Bryan Reynolds, Miguel Mostafa The origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, particles capable of reaching energies on the order of 10$^{20}$ eV, remain largely unknown. The Pierre Auger Observatory uses an array of surface detectors to record air showers of secondary particles and infer information about the primary cosmic ray particle, including its arrival direction and energy. According to the most recent analysis, the highest energy cosmic ray detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory, a particle with an energy of $1.3\times10^{20}$ eV, does not correlate with any known extra-galactic source. To further investigate this specific event, its arrival direction was cross-correlated with the location of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Energy losses during propagation imply that possible sources of a cosmic ray of such energy must be within 100 Mpc. The angular separation between a candidate AGN and the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energies above $4\times10^{19}$ eV was examined to determine the viability of the potential sources. Both the angular deflections as a function of energy obtained from data and the expectation from an isotropic distribution of cosmic rays will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:30AM - 11:42AM |
C4.00004: Determining the Particle Identification of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays Andrea Biscoveanu, Miguel Mostafa The mass composition of cosmic rays is of primary interest for determining their origin. The Pierre Auger Observatory uses both surface and fluorescence detectors to measure the depth of shower maximum, from which the mass of the primary particle can be inferred. The mean depth of shower maximum, $X_{\rm max}$, and the standard deviation from the mean are studied as a function of energy for cosmic rays with energies above $10^{18.8}$ eV reconstructed using the fundamental principle of shower universality. The results are compared with simulations for different nuclear primaries as well as with the official reconstruction used by the Pierre Auger Collaboration. Because the official reconstruction uses hybrid events that were recorded using both the surface and fluorescence detectors, there are insufficient statistics for determining $X_{\rm max}$ for energies above $10^{19.6}$ eV. The present analysis uses events recorded only with the surface detectors, so the measurements of $X_{\rm max}$ and its standard deviation can be extended up to $10^{19.8}$ eV. The $X_{\rm max}$ distribution seems consistent with a mixed composition even at the highest energies and is independent of zenith angle above $10^{19}$ eV. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:42AM - 11:54AM |
C4.00005: Neutron Veto Prototype for the proposed SuperCDMS Experiment Abaz Kryemadhi, Katrina Schrock, Matthew Bressler Both cosmology and particle physics converge on Weakly Interactive Massive Particles as a good candidate for dark matter. We helped develop a neutron veto detector for SuperCDMS experiment because neutrons produce the same interaction as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. The detector is made of liquid scintillator doped with an agent that captures neutrons and produces alpha particles that interact and create light, which then gets captured by fibers and routed to photodetectors. We designed a fourth scale prototype in order to understand the light output, characterize the photodetectors, compare to simulation, and understand the process of construction. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:54AM - 12:06PM |
C4.00006: Energy required to knock the Earth out of its own orbit, (cosmic catastrophe) Ahmad Reza Estakhr How much energy would be required to knock the Earth out of its own orbit? (throwing Earth out of orbit) Sometimes I wondering how the Earth could be thrown out of orbit! The gravitational disturbance that results will form a wave that travels across the spatial fabric in much the same way that a pebble dropped into a pond makes ripples that travel across the surface of the water. So we wouldn't feel a change in our orbit around the Sun until this G-wave reached the Earth all of sudden, and without any warning, these ripples of gravity travel at exactly the speed of light! when a beam of G-wave is incident on a planet; in the process, the G-wave entirely absorbed by the planet. If Energy of G-wave is larger than the planet's work function W-- the energy required to dislodge the planet from the orbit (the minimum energy required to free the planet from the orbit is called the work function of that planet)--the planet can be thrown out of orbit, unless E$>$W, where K$_p$ represents the kinetic energy of the planet leaving the orbit. The formula is the following: $E=K_p+W$, in the case of the Earth Work function $W=-30*10^{15}c^2$ where the $E$ represents total Energy of G-wave and K$_p$ represents the kinetic energy of the Earth leaving the orbit. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 4, 2014 12:06PM - 12:18PM |
C4.00007: Direct Calculation of Size and Mass of Universe using Speed of Light and Gravatational Constant Paul OBrien How I calculated the mass and size of the universe. My theory says the universe we live in started as a so called black hole that is imploding. The size and mass of this original black hole is what I calculated. The equation is very similar to E=MC$^2$. The underlying basis for my equation is mass, length, and time, which after all is the only real variables we can measure. At first sight I thought my units were all wrong,until you consider black whole thermodynamics. First I calculated the radius of this original black hole using C$^2$/G (Speed of light$^2$)/Gravitational constant = 1.34668374e+27 Kg/m As you can see the units are in Kg/m which would appear incorrect. But black whole thermodynamics stipulates that the mass of a black hole is a function of it surface area. That means that for the specific case of black holes, mass does becomes equivalent to surface area, so by equality you can substitute mass with area. This sounds bizarre but it is true for black holes. Mass = surface area, and in metric units Kg = m$^2$. When you go back to my equation and do the substitution you get your radius in meters (Speed of light$^2$)/Gravitational constant = 1.34668374e+27 m$^2$/m = 1.34668374e+27 m Thus the mass of our universe becomes Radius*C$^2$/2G= 9.0677855e+53 Kg [Preview Abstract] |
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