Christmas+Break+(December+21-January+7)

With my Many Eyes visualization applet finally up and running, I was able to spend time over break playing with my set of data and continuing my search for cosmic rays in the data set. Many of the graphs that I generated confirmed that there are several particles in the set that I chose to upload to Many Eyes that do not match the mass requirement of cosmic rays (above 40 GeV).

I highlighted all of the particles with a mass lower than 40 GeV to see their interaction in other plots.

Coincidentally, these highlighted particles also did not meet the criteria of other cosmic ray characteristics. For example, in the graph of Phi 1 vs. Eta 1 below, we see that while some of the previously highlighted particles do correspond with the trend of the other particles in the data set (fall within the two "blobs" of particles that are focused around positive and negative 1/2 pi on the y axis and zero on the x axis--where we would expect cosmic rays to lie), many of them are outliers. What could be the reason that they behave similarly to cosmic rays in this case? This could just indicate that their trajectory was similar to that of cosmic rays (in the middle of the phi or eta scale). Keeping in mind that this is only shows one of the two particles from each dimuon event, these results are coincidental. The majority of the outliers, though, are highlighted particles. This supports the idea that the particles below a mass value of 40 GeV are not cosmic rays. (Even though this only reflets 2 criteria, it supports the concept).