Safekipedia

Cosmic ray

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

The Crab Nebula is a beautiful cloud of gas and dust in space, formed from an old star that exploded. It glows with colorful lights from different elements!

Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays are tiny bits of matter that zoom through space at super fast speeds, almost as fast as the speed of light. Most of these bits are called protons, and they come from far away places, like our own Milky Way galaxy, other galaxies, and even the Sun.

These tiny bits travel through space and sometimes hit Earth's air. When they do, they make new tiny bits, but many are stopped by Earth's special magnetic shield, called the magnetosphere. Only a few reach the ground.

People have known about cosmic rays since 1912. A scientist named Victor Hess discovered them by flying high in a balloon with special tools. Today, we study them with tools on satellites and space probes. Scientists think many cosmic rays might come from exploding stars called supernovas or from powerful places in faraway galaxies known as active galactic nuclei.

Even though cosmic rays are very powerful, most of them have just a little bit of energy. They are interesting because they can affect tiny parts in electronics, but Earth's air and magnetic shield protect us. Scientists keep learning more about these tiny bits of space matter and where they come from.

Images

An old photograph of scientist Domenico Pacini taking a measurement in 1910, contributing to our understanding of cosmic rays.
An early scientific graph showing how cosmic rays increase with altitude, as discovered by Victor Hess and Werner Kolhörster between 1912 and 1914.
Victor Franz Hess, an Austrian scientist, after his historic balloon flight in 1912 where he discovered cosmic rays.
A chart showing how space weather conditions and cosmic rays change over solar cycles.
The VERITAS array is a special telescope used by scientists to study cosmic rays from space.
A stunning view of Earth rising over the Moon, captured by astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.
An image representing gamma ray observations of the Moon from space telescopes.

Related articles

Speed of light
Milky Way

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Cosmic ray, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.