COSMIC RAYS

We are daily exposed to the radiation environment. Till the beginning of the 20th century we hadn´t known about it at all, because we couldn´t have suspected it, although those hidden particles occur everywhere around and also penetrate through us in any time! Even after discovery of this radiation it was expected that it comes from rocks beneath our feet, thus being Earth originated.

In the year 1912 Victor Hess, Austrian scientist, detected via series of hot-air balloon ascents that most of these particles have extraterrestrial origin. He discovered what was called Cosmic Radiation. Just coincidentally, but notably for our effort, he started also from Hradec Králové, which is nowadays situated in Czech Republic. Since the time extensive worldwide research has taken place, enabling and stimulating formation of a new field, high-energy physics.

Despite that it took almost another century, till the onset of the Third Millenia, to fully visualize Cosmic Rays and open humankind mind to the outer space. A great deal of this progress has been done during last decades in the European high-energy physics laboratory, CERN, built for the most part deep under Geneva.

But let's go back to the roots and our team effort... We come from the same country where it all begun, using similar (although much advanced) technique as well to gain more interesting results concerning the same phenomenon. The difference is that nowadays we are using state-of-the-art detector device provided by the IEAP (Institute at Czech Technical University), which developed this detector originally.