Latest Cosmic ray Stories

HOUSTON, May 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting, principal investigator for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and its search for "dark matter" in the universe, will visit NASA's Johnson Space Center at 2:15 p.m. Friday, May 17. Media are invited to take part in a special opportunity to hear about his recent findings and ask questions. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Trent Martin, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) project manager...

[ Watch the Video: AMS Time Lapse Installation ] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online For decades scientists have wondered whether a mysterious form of matter – known simply as Dark Matter since it does not interact directly with light – makes up the majority of the “stuff” in the Universe. Researchers have pointed to the seminal work on the Bullet Cluster of galaxies as evidence that dark matter is a real substance. But similar observations of...

WASHINGTON, April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the first Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) results announced Wednesday at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. AMS is a cosmic ray particle physics detector on the exterior of the International Space Station. It was launched to the space station on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission on May 16, 2011. (Logo:...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft may have allegedly left the confines of our solar System after 35 years and more than 11 billion miles of traveling through space. Scientists writing in the Geophysical Research Letters claim that they measured drastic changes in radiation levels on August 25, 2012 while the spacecraft was sitting over 11 billion miles away from the Sun. The anomalous cosmic rays (those trapped in the outer heliosphere)...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new study using observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe. This discovery is a major step toward understanding the origin of cosmic rays, one of Fermi's primary mission goals. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "Scientists have been trying to find the...

[ Watch the Video: Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A thousand-year-old supernova has given the European Space Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) ample opportunity to gain some clues about the origins of cosmic rays. The new observations, reported in the journal Science today, suggest the presence of fast-moving particles in the supernova remnant. Over a thousand years ago, in 1006 AD, a new star was...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument that detected 50 million cosmic rays. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Balloon site near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft at...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to a new study, black hole cosmic radiation blasted into the Earth back in the 8th century. Japanese astrophysicist Fusa Miyake discovered last year clues for the strange event located in the rings of ancient cedar trees that dated back to either 774 or 775 AD. Researchers teamed together to determine what had caused the surge in carbon-14 in the rings and found no evidence of a supernova, as they had expected. The...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Science teachers in grade school sometimes hand out "mystery boxes," which contain ramps, barriers and a loose marble. Rotating the marble and feeling it hang up or drop, the students begin to deduce the contents of the box. Scientists who are trying to understand why tiny particles rain down from space face a similar dilemma, but on a much grander scale. Their mystery box is a hundred thousand light years across, and the only clues...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online They may not be using alien technology, but physicists from Los Alamos National Laboratory are looking to outer space for help in diagnosing a damaged nuclear reactors like the one that caused massive evacuations around the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011. According to their report in the journal Physical Letters, the research team from Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a way to use cosmic ray radiation to accurately...