Cosmic Rays · 11:09pm Dec 1st, 2019
New post on my Particle Gadgeteering blog:
Cosmic Rays: Extreme Energy Messengers from Space
Which completes the Further Details posts for the five particle physics research topics in my Particle Physics Pony Fic commissions project. The others are: Dark Matter, Neutrinos, Antimatter, Future Colliders. I am offering a financial incentive to a number of writers willing to write a pony story about one of these.
What sort of story could you write about cosmic rays?
Rainbow Dash taking an interest in the fastest-ever particles and what happens when they wham into the atmosphere?
(They may be fast, but still not as awesome as a sonic rainboom).Twilight Sparkle using some magic to talk to a particle arriving from outer space, revealing a mystery as it can’t remember where it came from?
A group of friends embarking on a high altitude balloon flight and learning something new about the universe while cruising above the clouds?
Yaks, dragons, and changelings all collaborating together to build a huge cosmic ray observatory spread across the Equestrian plain?
Or something completely different?
If you have an idea for a good story, about cosmic rays or one of the other topics, and want to write it, send me a pitch. See here for full details: Commissioning Fanfiction for Science Communication – Inviting Pitches
Hoping to get some more good pitches before 15 December. I will then pick the best ones.
I am highly intrigued, being something of an armchair scientist but for the life of me can't think of how to go about putting pony particle physics into words...
If I didn't have four other projects in various stages of not-getting-doneness, I'd go for the Flower Trio getting cosmic rays explained to them by Twilight Sparkle, with their misunderstandings driving them into ever greater states of panic. I'd end with the girls opening a mushroom shop in the deepest diamond dog hole they could find, to the consternation of the dogs themselves.
5162967
I remember when I participated in the writeoff competitions, it was always impressive how writers could spin a story out of the most impossible prompts. It can be done. I think the trick is not to think about how to turn a pony fic into a particle physics thesis, but to read about the science and think what story does it inspire you to write. Go off an a tangent. Then think about how you might tag your story to bits of physics.
5163302
Then we need a sequel where Pinkie Pie successfully explains the benefits of a low radioactive background in a deep underground laboratory, and they build a neutrino or dark matter search experiment.
My favourite fact about Cosmic Rays, is that the most powerful detected and measured event had a single particle energy several billion times higher than the total beam dump energy of the LHC, and That Cosmic ray didnt create a black hole.
Unless it was a Hawking Evaporation Event? Traveling so close to light speed it was time dilated to a interstellar traversable amount?