Mobile app turns phones into particle detectors
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028761
NPR : Extremely high-energy cosmic rays have been detected on Earth, but what produces them is a mystery. Because they are very rare, there is not much information on them. Now Daniel Whiteson of the University of California, Irvine, and Michael Mulhearn of the University of California, Davis, propose taking advantage of the proliferation of smart phones to detect and study the particles. They’re developing an app that uses the CMOS chip in a phone’s camera to detect the shower of lower-energy particles created when a high-energy cosmic ray strikes Earth’s atmosphere. The more people who download their app, the larger the surface area covered by the makeshift detector array. The app is currently in beta testing.
