High-Altitude Cosmic Ray Detection: Studying Energy and Atmospheric Interactions
University
Shawnee State University
Major
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Student Type
Undergraduate Student
Presentation Types
Oral Presentation (Live)
Keywords:
Cosmic Ray, Astrophysics, Particle Physics, AtmosphereScience
Abstract
Cosmic Rays are atomic nuclei ejected from stars, the majority of these particles that hit the Earth are blocked by Earth’s magnetic field. The high energy primary particles travel in our Earth’s atmosphere until they interact and create a shower of secondary particles. This often happens in the upper atmosphere so to study this interaction we must have a detector on, for instance, a balloon. Dr. Hamilton has run a balloon flight for exactly this purpose, so we are looking at detections and the correlation of altitude and trying to find out how much energy each cosmic ray had.
Human and Animal Subjects
no
IRB or IACUC Approval
no
Faculty Mentor Name
Tim Hamilton
Faculty Mentor Title
Professor
Faculty Mentor Department
Natural Sciences
Recommended Citation
Bowman, Jordan, "High-Altitude Cosmic Ray Detection: Studying Energy and Atmospheric Interactions" (2025). Celebration of Scholarship. 3.
https://digitalcommons.shawnee.edu/cos/2025/session7/3
Location
LIB 204
High-Altitude Cosmic Ray Detection: Studying Energy and Atmospheric Interactions
LIB 204
Cosmic Rays are atomic nuclei ejected from stars, the majority of these particles that hit the Earth are blocked by Earth’s magnetic field. The high energy primary particles travel in our Earth’s atmosphere until they interact and create a shower of secondary particles. This often happens in the upper atmosphere so to study this interaction we must have a detector on, for instance, a balloon. Dr. Hamilton has run a balloon flight for exactly this purpose, so we are looking at detections and the correlation of altitude and trying to find out how much energy each cosmic ray had.
