Space – the final frontier. These are the voyages of University physics and astronomy professor Jim Matthews.
Matthews hasn’t explored strange new worlds or boldly gone where no one has gone before. But he has been to the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, where he’s studied matter that has come to Earth from across the universe.
Matthews is part of a team that studies cosmic rays, which are microscopic particles that travel extensive distances through space.
“I don’t want to call them rays,” Matthews said. “That’s old-fashioned because people have observed these particles more or less for a hundred years.”
The atomic particles hit Earth from many places in the universe. Matthews said the particles are of such high energies that no particle acceleration experiment on Earth could duplicate them.
“At the highest energy, it’s like a single proton carrying the same amount of energy that a baseball would have if you threw it at me,” he said. “A baseball’s got zillions of protons in it. Compact all that energy into one of them, and that’s sort of what we’re talking about.”
Paul Mantsch, project manager for the Auger Observatory, said the particles are 100 million times more energetic than those studied on Earth. He said scientists have recognized special qualities in the cosmic particles since the 1930s.
“These high-energy events are really rare,” Mantsch said. “They hit at a rate of one per square kilometer per century. We want to know where they came from and why they’re so energetic.”
Recent experiments have suggested that violent black holes are hurling the high-energy rays through the vacuum of space.
“There’s zillions of galaxies in the universe, and probably most of them have a compact object at the center, which is probably a black hole, that’s keeping everything together in the galaxy,” Matthews said. “Some of the central objects are really bright and spew out a lot of radiation, and you can see this from Earth.”
As particles travel through space, their trajectories are affected by various magnetic fields, and it can be difficult to determine their origins. Matthews said however, the high-energy particles he studies travel in relatively straight lines. Following those lines, he said, can provide fair indication of where they come from.
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe, who served as director of NASA prior to joining the University, praised Matthews and his colleagues for their research.
“We’re extremely proud of their work,” he said. “This great research and groundbreaking kind of activity gives further indication that LSU faculty are very aggressively pursuing research opportunities. It’s a tremendous achievement, and we’re very proud of them.”
Matthews said that while his research will not produce immediate, tangible results, the subject has great appeal and high scientific value.
“The future technologists of the world tend to get their advanced degrees in many cases with physics experiments,” he said. “If we were a business, I’d say our product is people. I’m not going to deliver a better toaster. What I’m going to do is try to make our universe a place we understand just a little bit better. And that will make me happy.”
—-Contact Parker Wishik at [email protected]