A balloon that is designed to detect energetic particles in the upper atmosphere of Antarctica has discovered that cosmic radiation is present in greater quantities than expected, says John Matson at sciam.com in a report of a new study published in Nature on November 19, 2008. The balloon caries what is termed an ATIC (for Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter), a device that is sensitive to the electrons in cosmic radiation. Because of the energy range particular to this type of cosmic radiation, and the quantity found, it is probable that the radiation stems from a nearby source.
The radiation found was in the 300-800 giga-electron-volt range. This type of energy can be emitted from a verity of sources, including pulsars, microquasars, and something called Kaluza-Klein particles. Based upon the quantities of radiation observed by the ATIC device it was supposed that the Kaluza-Klein particle was the culprit, although this cannot be determined for certain.
The Kaluza-Klein particle has been implicated as being a possible candidate for what is known as dark matter. The standard method of evaluating dark matter uses the gravitational effects it has on galaxies, instead the researchers tried to observe actual particle discharge, in the form of electrons and photons. What has been accomplished in this study is a new method of investigating dark matter, one that may change the course of this type of particle physics. This new method may lead us further on the path to discovering how the universe works.
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Sorry this posting is so late. There was some confusion about its readiness, and procrastination on my part. Due to slight technical issue the link in the very beginning of the fourth line was not added, the article can be found at http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=antarctic-balloon-on-the-trail-of-d-2008-11-19.
Who (what organization) launched the research balloon?
The results are quite interesting. Eisenstein had his "cosmological constant", is it possible that there is some sort of something that has effects like that constant?
The fact that research may now be trending toward "finding" dark matter by what it produces in intriguing... Perhaps more balloons will find more information to go on. That would be great. A similar vein of research, into the nature of particles, is with collides, like the LHC, is it possible the two mechanisms will corroborate?
I wonder what the next step it the researching process will be?
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