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Science 26 March 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5410, p. 2007
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5410.2007c
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Near the dusty oil town of Malargue in Argentina's Mendoza Province, astrophysicists from around the world gathered last week to break ground on a $53 million facility they hope will solve one of the great puzzles of the sky: Where do cosmic rays come from and what makes them so energetic? Called the Pierre Auger project, it will be the world's first large-scale cosmic ray detector, eventually comprising 1600 11,000-liter tanks of water spread over 3000 square kilometers.

Figure 2Showers of particles created when extremely high-energy cosmic rays slam into Earth's atmosphere will pass through the tanks, creating trails of so-called Cherenkov light that will be picked up by detectors. These rays are still "a mystery of the first order," says Nobelist James Cronin of the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, a spokesperson for the 19-country team. The detector won't be complete until 2004 but will start taking data by next year.

The $100 million Pierre Auger project (Science, 1 September 1995, p. 1221) is designed to include a second detector, for the Northern Hemisphere, which, if the funds are raised, may be built in Utah.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)