Recent Press Releases
New telescopes could solve 100 year mystery
PR07(07)
Tue, 22 May 2007
The source of cosmic rays, charged particles that “rain” from space, has been a mystery to astronomers for almost a century. Physicists believe that a new generation of telescopes, due to begin observations later this month in Arizona, will answer the question of where these particles come from. How they will do this and how the instruments will work is announced at the Institute of Physics nuclear and Particle Physics conference on 3 April 2007.
Michael Daniel at the University of Leeds said: “The new array of telescopes will enable astronomers to study massive objects in space such as supernova, which could be the origin of cosmic rays.”
The array is called VERITAS (very energetic radiation telescope array system) and is a state-of-the-art instrument built to observe gamma ray emission from extreme astrophysical phenomena in the Universe. Gamma rays are photons carrying millions of times more energy than photons of visible light. With four telescopes of 12-meter aperture, VERITAS is at least ten times more sensitive than the pioneering Whipple 10-meter telescope that discovered the first source of very energetic gamma rays from the Crab Nebula in 1989.
Daniel continued: “The arrays will also advance our understanding of fundamental physics. The energies reached by particles in supernova remnants and the jets from supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei are still way beyond anything we can manage in particle accelerators on Earth. These environments are the kind of laboratory for fundamental physical processes that we can only dream of achieving. The array will be a new way for us to study what is going on inside them.”
While VERITAS is similar in appearance to an array of optical telescopes the similarities stop there. Gamma rays cannot be reflected by a mirror: they do not even penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, they collide with air molecules tens of kilometers overhead and release energy into showers of particles that cascade towards the ground. By imaging these fleeting collisions, in which some of the gamma ray energy is converted into faint blue light called Cherenkov radiation, astronomers can image the source of gamma rays.
Notes to editors:
- The talk, the status of VERITAS, will take place on Tuesday 3 April 2007 at 12:00 hours.
- The Insititute of Physics conference, Nuclear and Particle Physics Conference, will be held on 3 – 5 April 2007 at the University of Surrey. The full programme for the conference can be found here.
- For more information and interviews, please contact Helen MacBain, press officer, Institute of Physics, Tel: +44(0)7946 321 473, +44(0)20 7470 4815 or E-mail: helen.macbain@iop.org.
- The Institute of Physics is a scientific membership organisation devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics. It has an extensive worldwide membership (currently over 35,000) and is a leading communicator of physics with all audiences from specialists through government to the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.
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