Physicists Recreate Cosmic Ray Interactions in Lab to Understand Universe's Mysteries

Scientists using CERN's Large Hadron Collider have successfully recreated how high-energy cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere. This groundbreaking experiment, led by New York University and reported in Physical Review Letters, involved introducing oxygen beams for the first time in the LHC and colliding them with proton beams, offering the world's first measurements of 'cosmic rainstorms' under controlled conditions. The findings enhance understanding of interstellar particles.