More than 250 miles above earth, Space Shuttle Atlantis will undock from the International Space Station today, after bringing up the $1.4 billion Destiny Laboratory the heart and soul of the space station with them.
Down in the musty basement of Texas Tech's Science Building, a few physics professors have been working diligently on a space station project that will measure the composition and speed of cosmic ray particles still an enigma to physicists.
This is the first research project related to the International Space that Tech has undertaken. It was funded by a $300,000 research grant from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and is called the Advanced Cosmic Ray Composition Experiment for the Space Station, or ACCESS for short.
Tech is one of 14 institutes of higher learning and five government research groups working on ACCESS and competing to come up with the best prototype for the experiment.
Texas Tech professors Richard Wigmans, left, and Alan Sill pose last summer in front of their cosmic ray catcher while testing it at CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
Photo provided by Alan Sill
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other institutes working on ACCESS will look at the many different prototypes that have been built, discuss the pros and cons of each and then set to work on a final design to be launched up to the space station in 2007.
Shining light on the rays
So far, science has explained cosmic rays are ordinary particles such as iron, protons, neutrons and other star materials shot from a star that has gone supernova. Most of these particles move at the speed one would expect from such a reaction.
However, some cosmic ray particles move faster than any supernova could push them, according to Alan Sill, a research professor at Tech and particle physicist.
Photo provided by Alan Sill
NASA scientists have dubbed these curiously supercharged particles fastballs.
"It's like the edge of an old map where it says, 'There be dragons here,' and nobody knows how they get up to that high energy," he said, adding that there could be some high-powered reactions going on in the universe more powerful than anything known to science.
Exactly what cosmic rays are made of has not been understood fully, either, because Earth's atmosphere acts as a shield, keeping scientists from in-depth study of the rays, he said. The knowledge gathered since 1915 has been from balloon experiments that send measuring devices high into the atmosphere for a better look. Being in space, however, is the ultimate lab when it comes to studying the cosmic rays, he said.
"This is a new direction of astrophysics," he said. "The physics of this project is to study, element by element, what cosmic rays are made of. In this kind of research, you can always learn more by combining what you can do in space with what you can learn on the ground."
Sill said he came to Tech to work through the university on the Superconducting Super Collider project in Waxahachie that was killed in 1993. The super collider's purpose was to speed up particles enough to act like the particles in cosmic rays.
Also, Sill said, he hopes projects like this one, which he described as at the forefront of scientific study, will attract more science-minded students to Tech.
Building the better mousetrap
The design of the device is the brainchild of Richard Wigmans, a Bucy professor at Tech.
Originally a scientist for the European super collider project at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, Wigmans said he was wooed to Tech by the Bucy professorship, which was set up in hopes that the American super collider project in Waxahachie would take off.
Since the program was cut, he said he worked to get Tech involved with the NASA project, which it did three years ago.
His cosmic ray catcher a calorimeter is a series of metal plates, one behind the other, that the particles will hit. When the fastballs hit the plates, he said, particles will break off from initial hit site on the plate.
They will travel through the other plates, causing a shower effect of atomic particles moving through the metal.
From this shower effect and a lot of higher mathematics, scientists can determine the direction the fastballs came from, what the particles were made of and the speed at which they traveled. The goal is to figure out the origin.
After testing the cosmic ray catcher in July at CERN, Wigmans said he is happy with the results.
But the device must be built so that it is light enough, small enough and sturdy enough to be rocketed into space on a shuttle and bolted onto the space station's frame before NASA will consider using it, he said.
NASA gets concerned about weight because it costs $70,000 a pound to move items into space, he said.
That price multiplied by Tech's three-ton instrument equals $420 million.
Wigmans said a small detector such as the three-ton one creates a problem for the experiment because fastballs are relatively uncommon, he said.
"There are only a handful of them out there," he said. "They occur at a rate of only a few per square meter per year. So, what you like to have is the largest possible surface area and many years so that you can get the best information."
Once the final prototype is decided upon and built, Wigmans said, information gathered from the machine will be shared among the organizations working on the project. The experiment is slated to last until 2011, said Thomas Cline of NASA.
ACCESS to the universe
Cline is the study project scientist for the ACCESS program at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Md. Though the project has been under way for several years, he said, the prototype for the experiment will be chosen by NASA late this year.
Since the first cosmic ray balloon experiment in 1915, Cline said man has been trying to figure out exactly what these rays do. However, he said, he wasn't sure this experiment would unravel any mysteries totally.
"I don't expect this to revolutionize the field, but I do expect it to bring in a lot of critical information," he said.
Though who will analyze the data is yet to be figured out, Cline said, the results will be posted on the Web for the world to see.
Sill and Wigmans said they have no idea if Tech's prototype will be chosen, let alone what this study will yield, except a greater understanding of how the cosmic rays work. Neither one knows of the practical applications that will come from the knowledge gained from the experiment.
This experiment could bring new innovation as well as greater understanding of the cosmic rays and the universe, they said.
Though the research gathered from the ACCESS program will be for scientific knowledge, Sill said, information gathered from the experiments can help NASA when it comes to guarding astronauts from radioactive exposure.
Knowledge of how cosmic rays work in space can help build better shielding on space vehicles, since the rays contain radioactive particles, he said.
The device even can be put in front of the astronauts and used as a shield, he said.
Wigmans said this kind of speculative science can raise the hackles of taxpayers. He compared the experiment to the discovery of radioactive material at the end of the 19th century.
"That discovery lead to the advent of the atom bomb and nuclear fusion, which nobody was looking to make at the time," he said. "But, if you understand how the science works, you can better understand the different applications."
John Davis can be contacted at 766-8713 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Cosmic Ray Catcher
The cosmic ray catcher, or calorimeter, is a series of metal plates, one behind the other, that cosmic particles will hit.
When these fastballs do hit, particles will break off from the hit site on the first plate and travel through other plates.
Scientists hope the calorimeter will provide information on where the particles came from, what they are made of and the speed at which they travel.