Research into cosmic rays by scientists at Stellenbosch University (SU) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has been energised by the delivery, from France, of a muon detector. The detector is on loan from the French Institute of Physics of the Two Infinities (IP2I), located in the city of Lyons. Muons are used by ground-based observers as an indirect way to study cosmic rays. These latter are high-energy particles, travelling at close to the speed of light, which come from interstellar space and cannot penetrate far into Earth’s atmosphere. But when these rays encounter the atoms and molecules of the topmost levels of the atmosphere, the resulting interactions produce muons, which “rain down” on the Earth below.
