RESUMO
LIDAL (Light Ion Detector for ALTEA, Anomalous Long-Term Effects on Astronauts) is a radiation detector designed to measure the flux, the energy spectra and, for the first time, the time-of-flight of ions in a space habitat. It features a combination of striped silicon sensors for the measurement of deposited energy (using the ALTEA device, which operated from 2006 to 2012 in the International Space Station) and fast scintillators for the time-of-flight measurement. LIDAL was tested and calibrated using the proton beam line at TIFPA (Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics Application) and the carbon beam line at CNAO (National Center for Oncology Hadron-therapy) in 2019. The performance of the time-of-flight system featured a time resolution (sigma) less than 100 ps. Here, we describe the detector and the results of these tests, providing ground calibration curves along with the methodology established for processing the detector's data. LIDAL was uploaded in the International Space Station in November 2019 and it has been operative in the Columbus module since January 2020.
RESUMO
Measuring the cosmic ray flux over timescales comparable to the age of the Solar System, â¼4.5 Gyr, could provide a new window on the history of the Earth, the Solar System, and even our Galaxy. We present a technique to indirectly measure the rate of cosmic rays as a function of time using the imprints of atmospheric neutrinos in "paleo-detectors," natural minerals that record damage tracks from nuclear recoils. Minerals commonly found on Earth are â²1 Gyr old, providing the ability to look back across cosmic ray history on timescales of the same order as the age of the Solar System. Given a collection of differently aged samples dated with reasonable accuracy, this technique is particularly well-suited to measuring historical changes in the cosmic ray flux at Earth and is broadly applicable in astrophysics and geophysics.