Communications of the ACM
Smartphones Come in Handy For Rare Cosmic Particles Search
Russian researchers say they have improved a method for analyzing ultra-high-energy cosmic rays using smartphones.
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Researchers at the Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis (LAMBDA) at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia say they have improved a method for analyzing ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with mobile phones.
The research was performed for a project that proposes using a distributed mobile phone network to detect UHECRs. To accomplish this, the researchers developed an algorithm for constructing convolutional neural networks that can be used with mobile phones.
The phones' cameras use technology similar to that in particle detectors, giving them the ability to detect Extended Atmospheric Showers (EAS) formed when UHECRs interact with air particles. The researchers say the EAS particles interact with the camera and leave traces of weakly activated pixels, which can be difficult to differentiate from interference and random noise.
If millions of phones are used in the experiment, the researchers will use a trigger algorithm to eliminate background data, and a neural network to detect muon signals.
From National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia)
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