University professor studies intergalactic particles
Parker Wishik
Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: News
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Space - the final frontier. These are the voyages of University physics and astronomy professor Jim Matthews.
Matthews hasn't explored strange new worlds or boldly gone where no one has gone before. But he has been to the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, where he's studied matter that has come to Earth from across the universe.
Matthews is part of a team that studies cosmic rays, which are microscopic particles that travel extensive distances through space.
"I don't want to call them rays," Matthews said. "That's old-fashioned because people have observed these particles more or less for a hundred years."
The atomic particles hit Earth from many places in the universe. Matthews said the particles are of such high energies that no particle acceleration experiment on Earth could duplicate them.
"At the highest energy, it's like a single proton carrying the same amount of energy that a baseball would have if you threw it at me," he said. "A baseball's got zillions of protons in it. Compact all that energy into one of them, and that's sort of what we're talking about."
Paul Mantsch, project manager for the Auger Observatory, said the particles are 100 million times more energetic than those studied on Earth. He said scientists have recognized special qualities in the cosmic particles since the 1930s.
"These high-energy events are really rare," Mantsch said. "They hit at a rate of one per square kilometer per century. We want to know where they came from and why they're so energetic."
Recent experiments have suggested that violent black holes are hurling the high-energy rays through the vacuum of space.
"There's zillions of galaxies in the universe, and probably most of them have a compact object at the center, which is probably a black hole, that's keeping everything together in the galaxy," Matthews said. "Some of the central objects are really bright and spew out a lot of radiation, and you can see this from Earth."
Matthews hasn't explored strange new worlds or boldly gone where no one has gone before. But he has been to the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, where he's studied matter that has come to Earth from across the universe.
Matthews is part of a team that studies cosmic rays, which are microscopic particles that travel extensive distances through space.
"I don't want to call them rays," Matthews said. "That's old-fashioned because people have observed these particles more or less for a hundred years."
The atomic particles hit Earth from many places in the universe. Matthews said the particles are of such high energies that no particle acceleration experiment on Earth could duplicate them.
"At the highest energy, it's like a single proton carrying the same amount of energy that a baseball would have if you threw it at me," he said. "A baseball's got zillions of protons in it. Compact all that energy into one of them, and that's sort of what we're talking about."
Paul Mantsch, project manager for the Auger Observatory, said the particles are 100 million times more energetic than those studied on Earth. He said scientists have recognized special qualities in the cosmic particles since the 1930s.
"These high-energy events are really rare," Mantsch said. "They hit at a rate of one per square kilometer per century. We want to know where they came from and why they're so energetic."
Recent experiments have suggested that violent black holes are hurling the high-energy rays through the vacuum of space.
"There's zillions of galaxies in the universe, and probably most of them have a compact object at the center, which is probably a black hole, that's keeping everything together in the galaxy," Matthews said. "Some of the central objects are really bright and spew out a lot of radiation, and you can see this from Earth."
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