On my flight today, I was chatting with a fellow who worked on CO2 lasers– since I happen to have my USB Radiation detector I figured this would be a good opportunity to detect the Cosmic rays coming in to the plane with interested parties. It worked (photo here). The detector picked up 80, 120 and 240 Muon Count Rate (cpm). I haven’t dumped all the data and looked it up yet- seems harmless of course, but it was really neat to detect stuff while high above the clouds at 20,000 feet. When I get time, I’ll map the data with GPS, Sat photos and altitude- kinda like war driving for radiation.
0 thoughts on “Detecting Cosmic Rays on planes”
Isn’t using GPS on an airplane illegal?
yeahh.. I think it is.
i meant match up the route, not using a gps on a plane :-]
cheers,
pt
I can’t imagine why it would be illegal while cruising. GPS are receivers not xmtrs. Probably like all elex stuff – not allowed during takeoff / landing.
Is makezine available at Barnes&Noble or some other store?
I think if they allow GPS on planes, the terrorists win.
bla, bla, terrorists…
I want to know about the USB Radiation detector, like a url or diy kinda thing.
And more detailed info…
I’ve done this as well: Geiger Counter
What you were doing is actually done commercially. Airborne gamma-ray spectrographic surveys are carried out pretty regularly, though using much smaller aircraft and flying much lower to the ground. spectrographic surveys are also usually carried out in paralel with other geophysical surveys as well.