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Published online 18 March 2008 | Nature 452, 264- (2008) | doi:10.1038/452264b

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Fly's eye detector spies cosmic-ray cut-off

'HiRes' experiments get a positive negative result.

An experiment to detect subatomic particles arriving from deep space has triumphantly announced … their absence.

The finding, a swansong from the now defunct High Resolution Fly’s Eye (HiRes) cosmic-ray observatory in Utah, is far from a disappointment.

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  • A tiny depletion for cosmic ray proton plus CMB photon to photoelectron+positron is overshadowed by the intense GZK cutoff for photopion production. Two questions arise: 1) What is the the cosmic ray energy scattering threshold and cross-section for "dark matter?" Official truth is that there is a *lot* of it, as opposed to CMB photon concentration. 2) Helicity in an ultra-relativistic fermion is full chirality. The Weak interaction is strictly left-handed. Are the detected depleted protons of a single remaining chirality (polarized)?

    • 18 Mar, 2008
    • Posted by: "Uncle Al" Schwartz
  • Could this type of cosmic blast ( close to Earth) shed any light on destructive blasts witnessed over parts of Russia and Alaska in earlier times or was that something different?

    • 18 Mar, 2008
    • Posted by: regis e. smith Sr.staff technologist /Alcoa
  • Regarding the production of characteristic flashes of solar ultraviolet light, my experimental results with XRF sources and radioisotopes have shown first and definite evidence for ionizing radiations (beta, gamma, or X-ray) causing UV dominant optical radiation emission from the same parent excited atom by a previously unknown atomic phenomenon. Solar X-rays and gamma rays are responsible for solar UV by the new phenomenon. http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/1010/6discoveries.html M.A.Padmanabha Rao, Former Professor in Medical Physics, raomap@yahoo.com

    • 21 Mar, 2008
    • Posted by: M.A.Padmanabha Rao