A message from the Organizer
After I started to live in Urcuqui I discovered that we can see millions of stars and galaxies
at every night. The sky is so clear that we clearly see even the disc, «pancake of stars»,
of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
When I was a high-school boy I did the same thing, after getting tired of my homework.
(In Japan competition to Colleges and Universities is pretty severe..)
Then, I suddenly asked the question “Why do we live in such a world?”
It looks like our planet Earth is floating in space, and it looks like others too.
Why didn’t they fall? Oh, no, there is no reason why they fall, because there is nothing to which we fall.
The questions expands. Who created such a huge empty space?
Who created stars and galaxies inside the empty space?
Scientists say that the «empty space” is expanding, but why?
We do not know the answer to these questions, probably except for the last one.
To know our cosmos better we need to know what are happening there.
Most part of our universe is quiet. There is almost nothing if everything is averaged over.
But, in some limited regions, extremely violent phenomena are occurring.
Active galactic objects spout “jet” whose size is larger than our galaxy, inside which cosmic ray is accelerated.
Massive stars undergo gravitational collapse by emitting neutrinos, and then the whole stars explode (called supernovae).
Outer layer of the star which was exploded in the year 1054 is still expanding at the speed of 600 km/s (per second not hour!), the Crab nebula.
In most cases neutron star is left (some cases Black Hole), with extremely dense medium of weight 100000000 ton/cm3. Neutron stars with typically 1-2 solar mass often spin (rotates 30 times per second in the case of Crab pulsar) and has strong magnetic field, emitting regular “pulse” (called pulsar).
Very recently people observed gravitational wave emitted when two BH had merged together.
Scientists want to explore the active universe by observations.
Here in South America (incl. South Pole), there are a lot of such experiments that observe cosmic rays, gamma rays, astrophysical neutrinos, and the lights from regions where stars are formed.
In our workshop they (and others from North) will come and will give us exciting informations!
¡Join us in the middle of the world!
Hisakazu Minakata (Organizer)
Astroparticle Physics Yachay Tech 