Week+of+February+25+-+March+4

February 25
Today I arrived at quarknet at 3:45 and ran into a few computer troubles. Now that I got things settled, I am going to carry off where I left off last Wednesday. I was looking at the dataset of cosmic rays in Many Eyes and began to look for some interesting patterns that may catch my eye, if they do exist at all. At this point, I know not if there is anything worth finding in this data, but I will never know until I take a look. I will start to look around and see if anything seems to catch my eye. The first noticeable characteristic occurred when I had chosen to graph Q1*Q2. I have made the reasonable assumption that within this data, all that exists are cosmic rays. When looking at this differently, I see some very interesting points that make me suspect to that notion. For one, a graph showing Q1*Q2: There are obvious issues regarding this graph. With just 4 outliers, it is clear that the balance of positive and negative values are drastically leaning toward negative, as I have asserted they should be in the previous semester. With just 5 points in the positive spectrum, I feel that these similarly charged particles cannot be cosmic rays, which makes me fear the soundness of the remaining data. Nevertheless, these points can help us to weed out unwanted patterns that may exist elsewhere, so I will highlight these points to see where they exist elsewhere in the scope of other graphs. With the 5 interesting points highlighted, I began to look at other graphs. Here is one demonstration: By observing this graph, it is clear that these 5 points do not quite belong. They roam the furthest from E/m = 1, and they also are of a lower mass than most other cosmic rays. These points are interesting in that they fit almost all specifications of cosmic rays except for a couple parameters, which begs the question: What are these particles? They are clearly not just particle reactions taking place in the detector because those seem to stop at 30 GeV. The fact that these particles have mass of 40-50 GeV makes them difficult to conclude as to their identity because they are heavier than the light particles but don't have a momentum value of 0. This explains the issue I had brought forth with the momentum graph in my previous post. It seems like the detector is not quite working the way that it should be because the equation E^2 = M^2 + P^2 does not hold true. These particles, which have like-charged daughter particles, are causing a bit of confusion and concern for the data. The next graph I decided is noteworthy deals with the parent rest frame. These outlier points seem quite isolated in the parent rest frame, and I have some images to back it up. This is one graph that represents this difference:  There is clearly something different about these points, and the parent rest frame is a good representation of this difference. Somehow the momentum of these particles is the same in both the first daughter particle and the second, but for some reason, the difference is huge compared to all the other points in a line. It follows the line, which confuses me because these small particles should not be cosmic rays, even though almost every parameter points to that notion. One final graph that I will show is that of the following: There is yet again a determinant of these particles that continue to show up. With significantly lower pt1 and eta1 values, these particles either do not belong in this data, show a possible exception to the patterns, or represent an error in the recording device. No matter which of the possibilities, I would like to investigate the reasons for this.