Cosmic Rays at the Highest Energies: Results from the Pierre Auger Observatory

Speaker: Tom Paul, Northeastern University

When: February 19, 2010 (Fri), 02:30PM to 03:30PM (add to my calendar)
View the poster for this event.

This event is part of the HEE Seminar Series.

Cosmic rays with energies as high as 10^20 eV have been observed, but unveiling their origins and composition is a challenge due to the rarity of events at this extreme end of the energy spectrum. The Pierre Auger Observatory was designed specifically to study such cosmic rays using a giant array of particle detectors and fluorescence light telescopes. I’ll describe how the experiment works and present some of the latest results concerning the energy spectrum, chemical composition, and searches for the cosmic ray sources.