A ray of light for space mystery

University of Utah scientists have operated cosmic ray observatories at Dugway for decades. The earlier version was called "Fly's Eye," and that was upgraded to a facility called the "High-Resolution Fly's Eye."

The Millard County observatory should begin its scientific work in about two years. A facility not on a military base is a nice change for scientists like Martens, who is a German national.

Dugway hosts top-secret research into ways that American troops can protect themselves against nerve agent and bacteria warfare. Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, Army officials were nervous about the presence of non-U.S. citizens there.

In the summer of 2000, the Dugway observatory was closed while the National Security Agency conducted an assessment of its imaging capability, checking whether detectors could somehow spy on Dugway projects. The reflective mirrors are great for picking up dim lights in the sky caused when cosmic rays break up in the atmosphere, but make poor telescopes, and the NSA cleared the facility.

After 9/11, at first the Army only allowed people with security clearances onto Dugway. The cost of cosmic ray research shot up as scientists hired people with security clearances from Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., to retrieve data.

Today, the Army allows scientists onto Dugway but only if they are U.S. citizens. Martens and other scientists who aren't citizens are kept off the base, he said.

"It is unfair to our colleagues who are American citizens who have to do the brunt of the work," he joked.

That won't be the case on the Bureau of Land Management and state property in Millard County.

What do scientists hope to accomplish there?

Most cosmic rays come from understood sources, such as ordinary stars and supernovae. But some of these particles are so powerful — the U. terms them "100 million times more energetic than anything produced by particle smashers on Earth" — that they must have stranger origins. Nobody knows exactly what these sources are.

Adding to the mystery, detections of these high-energy particles by the U. scientists and Japanese experts don't quite jibe. If the Japanese findings are correct "that poses enormous problems for our thinking about physics," Martens said.

Will the university's devices see showers of glowing particles at the same time that the Japanese devices detect cosmic rays? Using both types of detectors in the same observatory may resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, scientists are excited about the chance to chip away at the mystery and, perhaps, come up with a new understanding of the universe.

"Something is really fundamentally wrong," said Martens, "and this is where you learn something about science."

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