BUAP researchers participate in international symposium on high-energy cosmic ray interactions

• This symposium was held for the first time in Mexico.

Researchers from the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at BUAP gave lectures at the 22nd International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI), where they announced their collaboration on CMS experiments (Compressed coil) and Alice (Large Ion Collider ExperimentThey are installed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where scientists recreate the conditions of the early universe by colliding particles at speeds close to the speed of light.

after International Conference on Cosmic Rays (ICRC) ISVHECRI is the second most important event on the subject of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Both are sponsored by the Commission for Astroparticle Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which is chaired by Professor Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics.

For the first time, this symposium was held in Mexico, in July in Puerto Vallarta, with more than 100 participants from 20 countries. Its aim was to provide a forum for discussing very high energy interactions for interpreting cosmic ray data, based on information available from accelerator and cosmic ray experiments.

Dr. Maria Isabel Pedraza Morales explained how the CMS experiment helps us understand the “rain” of particles produced when cosmic rays collide with the atmosphere. By studying these collisions, scientists hope to learn more about the origin of these particles arriving from space.

For his part, Dr. Mario Rodriguez-Cahuanzi spoke about how the ALICE experiment solved a major mystery in physics: why there are more muons (particles similar to electrons, but much heavier) than expected in the “rain” of cosmic particles. The ALICE results suggest that the key could lie in a state of matter similar to the one that existed at the beginning of the universe.

BUAP researchers play a key role in these experiments, developing new techniques and analysing the data obtained. Thus, research in particle physics not only allows us to learn about the origin of the universe, but also contributes to the progress of society.