Miguel Boyayan Observatory in Argentina: 10 more years of experiments based on particles shooting through water tanks in the desertMiguel Boyayan
An international agreement signed in November 2015 will enable the Pierre Auger Observatory to continue operating until 2025. The document was signed at a symposium in the city of Malargüe, Argentina, attended by researchers and funding agency representatives from the various member countries of the consortium responsible for the observatory’s construction and operation. Over 500 scientists from 16 countries work at the Pierre Auger, which has been in operation since 1998 in Malargüe with the goal of investigating the origin and nature of cosmic rays – the most energetic particles in the Universe, with energy levels a few orders of magnitude above those that can be achieved by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Europe. The agreement provides for capacity enhancements for the observatory’s 1,660 surface detectors (water Cherenkov tanks, sensitive to the particle showers produced by cosmic rays colliding with the atmosphere). Additional scintillation light detectors will be installed and other detectors will also be built to distinguish the different components of the particle shower that comes in from outer space. Brazilian researchers have participated in this work since 1998, with support from FAPESP, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the Rio de Janeiro Research Foundation (FAPERJ).
Republish