Measurement of ultra-heavy cosmic rays at a lunar base

• Published in: AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (USA) Vol. 202:1
• Main Authors: Salamon, M.H., Price, P.B., Tarle, G.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: United States 15.03.1990
• Subjects: 440104 - Radiation Instrumentation- High Energy Physics Instrumentation; ABUNDANCE; COSMIC RAY DETECTION; COSMIC RAY SOURCES; DETECTION; DIELECTRIC TRACK DETECTORS; ELEMENT ABUNDANCE; EXPERIMENT PLANNING; GLASS; HEAVY NUCLEI; INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; ISOTOPE RATIO; MEASURING INSTRUMENTS; MOON; NUCLEI; PLANNING; RADIATION DETECTION; RADIATION DETECTORS; RESEARCH PROGRAMS; SATELLITES
• ISSN: 0094-243X

A wealth of information regarding cosmic ray synthesis and propagation is contained in the ultra-heavy (Z{gt}60) cosmic ray abundances; to extract this information, however, requires a detector capable of acquiring large statistics for these rare particles, as well as a charge resolution adequate to separate neighboring charge peaks at very large Z. A large, passive surface array of nuclear-track-detecting glass plates would meet these requirements. These glass plates could be periodically processe and analyzed for tracks at a lunar base, then melted/annealed for reuse in a continuously recycled detector array.