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My conversation with a real astrophysicist

A project log for Low-Cost Solid-State Cosmic Ray Observatory

Multiple nodes detect photons to within nanoseconds to analyze cosmic ray air showers and help solve the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin paradox.

aelias36aelias36 09/29/2014 at 06:470 Comments

I recently spoke to a friends's father whose research and dissertation was exactly on what I am doing in this project: detecting cosmic rays through air showers. He said that this should theoretically work, but told me that 2 things need to happen: first, I need to increase my detector area. This can be done by adding lots of metal above my PIN diodes so that particles cascaded and multiply, without having to use too many diode. Second, I need to increase my timing resolution by one order of magnitude. This should not be difficult as long as I use pulse integration, as explained in an earlier project log.

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