CERN reproduces cosmic ray showers by colliding oxygen with protons
Scientists used CERN's Large Hadron Collider to recreate cosmic ray showers by colliding oxygen atoms with protons on July 1, 2025, producing the world's first laboratory oxygen–proton collisions. Using ATLAS imaging and silicon sensors, the team measured how many particles were produced and their energies with more than tenfold greater precision than prior computer models predicted. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, provide data to refine air-shower simulations and improve estimates of cosmic ray composition, which could help trace their astrophysical origins and align particle physics models with observations from ground-based detector arrays.
Laboratory oxygen-proton collisions produced precise data on cosmic showers
Context
Scientists have studied cosmic rays for more than a century. Computer models disagree on how showers form. The LHC oxygen–proton data can help improve those models.
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