Comments on: Antarctic Particle Detector Buried in Ice Records Cosmic Ray Weirdness

By: Eliza Strickland

Eliza Strickland — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:03:30 +0000

@ Kevin: Ha! Maybe the researchers could arrange for him to be their celebrity spokesman.

– Eliza, DISCOVER online news editor

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:31:53 +0000

I know it’s wrong, but I keep picturing the actor Ice Cube performing these experiments.

By: JaberwokWSA

JaberwokWSA — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:28:52 +0000

I need a physicist to explain this. You can detect a cosmic ray by looking for their collision-created muon, yes? You can observe the path of the muon from the point of collision, understood. But, how can you determine what direction the cosmic ray came from by looking at the path of only the muon?

It’s like saying you can determine the direction of the cue ball solely by looking at the path of the eight ball. Are all collisions strictly linear? Wouldn’t an offset collision produce a muon path that was not colinear to the initial cosmic ray path? I could understand how you could determine the original path if there were two or more muons from the collision. Is this the case? How do quantum affects come in to play, since you are dealing with photons?

By: Justin Lapp (ActualityScience)

Justin Lapp (ActualityScience) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:01:55 +0000

A for building a facility that makes discoveries on topics it was not even designed for.
A+ for noticing the discoveries.

By: Space Bear

Space Bear — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:32:05 +0000

I’m a fan of “oh”s

By: Rhacodactylus

Rhacodactylus — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:49:45 +0000

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…’ ”
– Isaac Asimov