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---------------------------------- 2305 - Cosmic Rays , the source of evolution
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- These “rays” are called sub-atomic because they are mostly atomic nuclei, mostly protons, which are the nuclei of hydrogen that have lost their electron. Sometimes heavier nuclei are also found in Cosmic Rays, those of helium, iron, even carbon.
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- These particles are fast moving positive charged ions that create their own magnetic field. Their direction of motion is therefore changed under the influence of other magnetic fields they encounter.
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- Our Sun does emit low energy Cosmic Rays in the form of solar wind. But, the atomic nuclei are accompanied by unattached electrons, so the entire solar wind is a neutral charge traveling at 450 kilometers/second (1,006,621 miles per hour). This solar wind takes 4 days to reach Earth.
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- The highest energy Cosmic Rays originate from outside the Solar System and some from outside the Milky Way Galaxy. These high energy Cosmic Rays are very hazardous. If they struck your body at their higher energies they would destroy cells and tissues much like a powerful X-rays would.
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- Fortunately, our atmosphere and our magnetosphere surrounding Earth protect us from most high energy Cosmic Rays. Most incoming Cosmic Rays are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field and collide with the nuclei of the atmospheric gases. These nuclear collisions result in a cascade of other lower energy cosmic rays, subatomic particles, and radiation that pyramids down from the heavens to the Earth’s surface.
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- Thousands of these Cosmic Rays are going through your body every second. We will come back to these lower energy cosmic rays later, but first let’s try to identify where those high energy Cosmic rays are coming from.
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- The origin is beginning to become clear with evidence from X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra Space Telescope. The high energy Cosmic Rays appear to be generated in the shockwaves created by supernova explosions.
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- The rapidly expanding supernova remnants traveling at 1/30 the speed of light slam into interstellar gas. The magnetic fields created by the moving charged particles become broken, bent, deflected and distorted. The charged particles caught in these shockwaves get bounced back and forth like a tennis ball bouncing between two parallel walls that are coming together.
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- The supernova remnants are exploding at 1000 kilometers/second. The Intergalactic Gas is approaching at 200 kilometers/second with 4 times the density. The charged particles are bounced back and forth entangled in the magnetic fields and some eventually escape into free space with enormous energies traveling at >90% the speed of light.
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- One proton traveling at >99% the speed of light would have the equivalent energy of a baseball traveling at 120 miles per hour. This is equivalent to 3.1 * 10^20 electron-volts, or 50 joules of energy packed into a very tiny sub-atomic particle.
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- The particles are millions of years old by the time they reach Earth and collide with gas molecules in our atmosphere 15 kilometers over our heads. The gas atoms disintegrate into more subatomic particles creating ultraviolet radiation and a cascading cone shower of particles and radiation crashing towards Earth. The shower becomes a pyramid of particles of all different types.
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- When high energy Cosmic Rays strike atoms in our atmosphere the collisions represent the largest particle accelerator known to man. All kinds of exotic particles are created in these collisions: muons, neutrinos, even quark-gluon plasma matter.
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- Unfortunately, they are very hard to study since you never know when and where a Cosmic Ray collision might occur. Earth’s highest energy particle accelerator, Fermilab Tevatron, accelerates protons to 10^12 electron-Volts, the highest energy Cosmic Rays are 10^20 electron-Volts. That means nature’s particle accelerator 15 kilometers over our heads is 10^8, or 100,000,000 times more powerful than the biggest cyclotrons we can produce here on Earth.
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- Cosmic Rays in the solar wind emanating from the Sun are 10^7 electron-Volts. A flashlight battery is 1.5 volts. If you moved a single proton from the negative terminal to the positive terminal of a flashlight battery it would obtain the energy of 1.5 electron-Volts, since it has a charge of one electron and its potential energy was increased 1.5 volts.
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- Solar Comic Rays at 10^7 eV would require 6,666,667 of these 1.5 volt batteries connected end-to-end in order to attain the 10^7 eV. Cosmic Rays from intergalactic space at 10^20 eV would require 0.6 * 10^20, or,
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------------------- 66,666,666,666,666,666,666 of these batteries.
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- Cosmic Rays were first discovered in 1911 when Victor Hess took a gold-leaf electroscope detector up in a hot air balloon. The higher he went, 5 kilometers, the faster the ionized radiation discharged the gold-leaf detector. Hess proved that the radiation was cosmic ray charged particles coming from outer space and not ground radiation coming from mother Earth.
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- These Cosmic Rays are dangerous. Female aircrews are grounded from flying if they become pregnant because Cosmic Rays could harm the baby’s development. At sea level the cosmic Rays reaching the surface have lost most of their energy and are not as dangerous.
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- However, on average, each person absorbs enough Cosmic Ray energy to equate to two chest X-rays each year. Thousands of Cosmic Rays hit our bodies every second. The damage to cells and to tissues are repaired by our bodies and no permanent damage is done.
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- However, on occasion a Cosmic Ray damages a DNA string causing a mutation. That mutation changes the software code that programs the human body’s development. These mutations over time have contributed significantly to life’s evolution on Earth. Good mutations create diversity that help life evolve and survive more strongly. Bad mutations do the opposite and tend to be self-eliminating by definition. It is Darwin’s theory of evolution in action.
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- Mutations to your DNA is what makes your DNA unique. If your blood DNA is tested along with O.J. Simpson’s blood DNA your DNA would be different and unique and not a match to the crime scene. The chances of O.J.’s Cosmic Ray mutations being the same as your DNA mutations would be exceedingly rare. Therefore, DNA evidence is strong evidence that you can identify the correct person from a blood sample.
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- These mutations are measured at the branches of DNA unique to your lifetime. If you measured the DNA mutations near the trunk of the DNA tree you would find the mutations inherited from your father, your grandfather, great grandfather, etc.
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- If you go down the trunk far enough you would likely find evidence the you were related to O.J. Simpson. Deeper still and you find yourself related to a chimpanzee. Cosmic Rays have a lot to do with life’s evolution on Earth.
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- Above Earth, Cosmic Rays are creating exotic particles that have helped scientist understand the make up of matter. In 1932 Carl Anderson of Cal Tech. discovered the first anti-matter, an anti-electron, that later became known as the positron.
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- These electrons and positrons that come back together annihilate each other in a puff of gamma rays. Muons which are heavy electrons were first discovered in Cosmic Ray collisions. Also mesons called pions and kaons. At high enough energies even photons can break up into electrons and anti-electrons.
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- The ultra-high energy cosmic rays that are some 20 million years old coming from intergalactic space are not significantly deflected by the Sun or Earth’s magnetic fields. Although they are moving charged particles they tend to come to us so fast they remain in near straight lines.
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- Lower energy Cosmic Rays are greatly affected by magnetic fields and they tend to spiral perpendicular to the field’s magnetic lines of force. Consequently, lower energy Cosmic Rays tend to hide the direction or the source from which they came. Their change in direction of motion depends on the amount of their electric charge, their velocity, and the strength of the magnetic field they encounter.
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---------------------- (The magnetic force on a charged particle) = (the charge) * (velocity) * (strength of the magnetic field)
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--------------------------------------------- F = q*v*B
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- This force is at right angles to the direction of velocity creating a circular motion at a constant speed. This is what allows Cyclotrons to work shooting high energy charged particles around in circles.
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-------------------- (Radius of a charged particles circular path) = (velocity^2) * (the acceleration of the circular motion).
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-------------------------------------------- R = v^2 * a
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------------------------------------------- acceleration = v^2 / R
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------------------------------------------- Force = mass * acceleration
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------------------------------------------ Force = m*a = m*v^2/R = F = q*v*B
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----------------------------------------- Radius = R = m*v/q*B
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---------------------------------------- Momentum = mass * velocity = m*v
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- The radius of the cosmic ray traveling in a circle is proportional to the momentum of the charged particle and inversely proportional to the amount of its charge and the strength of the magnetic field.
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- For example:
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- The Earth’s magnetic field is 10^-4 kg / ampere*seconds^2 at a height of 100 kilometers.
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- The charge of a hydrogen nucleus, a proton = 1.6*10^-19 coulombs, a coulomb is an ampere * second.
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------------------------------ The mass of a proton is 9.5 * 10^-26 kg
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----------------------------- The velocity of the proton is 10^8 meters/second
- Radius = R = m*v/q*B = 9.5*10^-26 kg * 10^8 m/sec * ampere * sec^2
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- 1.6*10^-19 ampere * sec * 10^-4 kg
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------------------------------------ Radius = 594 kilometers
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- If undisturbed the cosmic ray proton would hit the Earth’s surface 369 miles away from its straight line projection.
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- The time for the proton to reach the surface of the Earth traveling at 10,000 km/sec from a height of 100 kilometers is 0.001 seconds.
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- The period of a complete circle of the proton’s rotation is 2*pi*R/v
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---------------------------------- Since R = m*v/q*B
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---------------------------------- Period = 2*pi*m / q*B
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- Substituting the same values into this formula the Period = 0.0373 seconds. The proton’s speed would allow only 9.7 degrees of rotation once it struck the magnetic fields at 100 kilometers elevation.
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- Of course, a cosmic ray would only get to complete its rotation in a magnetic field if its path were in the vacuum chamber of a cyclotron. In the Earth’s atmosphere, it would quickly collide with another gas atom nucleus creating a cascading shower of atomic particles.
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- The sum of all cosmic rays in our galaxy represent 10% of the galaxy’s total energy budget. Life on Earth would not exist if we were not protected from that enormous amount of energy.
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- By the same token life on Earth may not have evolved as it did if the continuous shower of cosmic rays had not created the diversity of life needed to survive the millions of years of a changing Earth environment.
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- Stay tuned, there is a lot more to learn…..
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- Other Reviews on Cosmic Rays, request:
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- 1927 - Your body encounters 240 muons passing through very second.
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- 1926 - Cosmic rays to planetesimals.
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- 1747 - Cosmic rays and gamma rays. This review lists 11 more reviews on comic rays
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- 1649 - Cosmic rays are ionized atomic nuclei.
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- 1624 - How powerful are cosmic rays?
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- 810 - Sunspots and cosmic rays.
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- 709 - The risks of space travel?
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- 687 - Cosmic ray discoveries?
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- March 13, 2019 541
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--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
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- to: ------- jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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-------------------------- Wednesday, March 13, 2019 --------------------------
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