A few days ago, a research paper was published about new discoveries made while detecting cosmic rays in space.
Cosmic Rays
If you already know about cosmic rays, you can skip this part
Cosmic rays are these tiny particles that come shooting at us from outer space. They are usually just nuclei of various atoms like Hydrogen, Helium, etc. Since they are produced in large events like supernovae, analyzing them can give facts about the nature of the universe and other important stuff.
Depiction of Cosmic Rays
The Discovery
Analyzing cosmic rays isn’t as easy as taking a picture; Mostly because they’re so small and also due to the fact that they disintegrate in our atmosphere. To solve the second problem, we’ve installed detectors in the ISS which catch the cosmic rays before they even enter the atmosphere.
The second problem requires a workaround. Instead of finding where they hit, we create a graph of their energy spectra. This means that we record how we record a sound wave rather than finding their impact points.
Cosmic Rays arrive at Earth from very far away and have a huge range of energies. The CALET system detected these cosmic rays and found that the spectrum for Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon was very similar but the Spectrum for Iron was very different from the others.
Scientists believe that it may be from other potential sources like neutron stars rather than supernovae or may have taken a different path to reach us
A really promising theory is that since iron is one of the heaviest particles that can be produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it may reach us relatively unaltered compared to the other lighter elements, though this raises more questions than answers.
One thing's for certain though. This discovery by the CALET detector can help push forward our understanding of the way matter is formed.