Going Beyond a Selfie [Microwave Surfing]

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (with energies of 1020 eV or more when they strike the atmosphere) are both mysterious in origin and fiendishly difficult to study because of their rarity. They pack the energy of a rapidly delivered cricket ball into a single blisteringly fast atomic nucleus, and each square kilometer of Earth is hit, on average, by about one a century. The Pierre Auger Observatory, a facility in Argentina which surveys 3,000 square kilometres of Earth’s atmosphere, picked up around 15 a year between 2005 and 2008. Discusses the concept of using CMOS chips in smartphones and examines applications for its use.