Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays

Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays on TerraPulse are organized into the uhecr Eventdex — one slot per particle. These are the most energetic particles ever measured: a single subatomic speck can carry the kinetic energy of a well-hit tennis ball, arriving from somewhere in the cosmos at a rate of roughly one per square kilometer per century. Each slot is a real detection. No estimates, no forecasts.

The dexes

Provenance

Every detection traces to the Pierre Auger Observatory, a sprawling array of 1,600 particle detectors spread across 3,000 square kilometers of the Argentine pampas. When one of these rare particles hits the upper atmosphere it triggers a cascade of secondaries; the array reconstructs the original particle’s energy and arrival direction from the footprint that rains down. Those reconstructions are the slots in this dex.

What’s in a record

Each particle slot carries:

• Time — arrival time, UTC
• Direction — the reconstructed arrival direction on the sky
• Energy — the reconstructed particle energy, in exa-electronvolts
• Event geometry — the shower’s zenith and azimuth angles at the ground