Huge network: The Pierre Auger Observatory uses a collection of 1,600 solar-powered particle detectors (like this one, with the Andes Mountains in the background) placed 1.5 km apart, in a grid spread across 3,000 square kilometres.
BUENOS AIRES: Scientists in western Argentina inaugurated on Friday the world's largest astronomical observatory, hoping to unlock the mysteries of high energy cosmic rays that bombard the Earth.
The vast Pierre Auger Observatory will now begin realising "its potential for the next 20 years," said astronomer and team member Beatriz Garcia.
Construction for the international effort – involving a team of more than 370 scientists and engineers from 17 countries – began in 1999, in an elaborate joint project to better understand the particles discovered by the facility's namesake, French physicist Pierre Auger, in 1938.
"Big step forward"
With the launch of the observatory's detection systems, science has "taken a big step forward in solving the mystery of the nature and origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays," said Nobel Prize winner James Cronin, of the University of Chicago, who conceived the Pierre Auger Observatory, along with Alan Watson of the University of Leeds in the Britain.
"The age of cosmic-ray astronomy has arrived," he said. The inauguration paves the way for a second phase of construction that will include building a similar instrument in the U.S. state of Colorado.
To observe the cosmic ray showers – high-energy particles present in universe that bombard the Earth – the Pierre Auger uses a collection of 1,600 particle detectors placed 1.5 km apart, in a grid spread across 3,000 square kilometres.
On top of this detection system, scientists will turn the observatory into the most powerful galactic observation instrument ever built with an additional 24 telescopes, to record emissions of light from the particle shower.
Cosmic particles amount to microscopic protons and atomic nuclei, which whizz across the vast expanse of the universe, approaching the speed of light.
Air shower
When the particles slam into Earth's upper atmosphere the impact splits them into secondary particles that scientists call an "air shower," which can spread across more than 40 square kilometres across the planet's surface.
These are "charged particles of energy ten million times more powerful than what people could catch in the CERN particle accelerator" in Geneva, said Garcia.
Even before the observatory was fully operational the scientists' work paid off with the discovery that cosmic rays originate from super massive black holes nestled at the heart of some galaxies (see, Black holes: source of high-energy cosmic rays, Cosmos Online).
But "there are still many mysteries that we have not yet uncovered," said Garcia. The beginnings, of a new age of scientific discovery have begun, the researchers said.
