HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- A team from the University of Alabama in Huntsville will be helping NASA answer one of science's most pressing questions: How do cosmic accelerators work and what are they accelerating?
UAH has been awarded $1.42 million of a $4.4-million grant studying high energy cosmic rays -- subatomic atomic particles traveling near the speed of light and carrying as much kinetic energy as a major league fastball. According to UAH principal investigator James Adams, it's one of 11 questions posed by the National Academy of Sciences to be answered during the 21st Century.
"We lack the imagination of how nature can do this with the objects we know about now, or that there are powerful objects in space that are responsible for these particles," Adams said in an interview. "That's why it's so interesting."The Extreme Universe Space Observatory mission -- a telescope being built to attach into the Japanese Instrument Model on the International Space Station -- includes researchers from UAH, the University of Chicago, Colorado School of Mines, Marshall Space Flight Center, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Vanderbilt University.
For its part of the grant, UAH and MSFC will design and operate a ground-based calibration system. The system will have calibrators in the earth's atmosphere, with xenon flashlamps in 12 different locations -- likely mountains at heights between 10,000 and 14,000 feet -- around the world. The altitude's needed to escape the planetary boundary layer where smoke and dust reside, Adams said.
Using video clips from the telescope in orbit, researchers are hoping to identify the nearest sources of subatomic particles. UAH will also be responsible for analyzing the data and placing it in a public archive maintained by NASA. Adams said collecting and mapping enough of the events could do just that.
"As we accumulate more and more of these, each time we can map the particle back onto the celestial sphere," he said. "And if we can accumulate enough of them, we shall start to see the sources. The arrival directions will point back to their sources."