Cosmic Ray Detector Array and Speed of the Muon

Supernovae across the universe eject cosmic rays that impact atomic nuclei in Earth’s atmosphere to create secondary particles like muons. The muon is an unstable particle that decays quickly and it can penetrate deep into matter. To measure the cosmic rays, we used light sensitive Photomultiplier detectors connected to scintillator sheets by optical fibers enclosed in a light tight box. We assembled multiple detector boxes to measure the high speed muon particles and using 3 different detector boxes we formed an array. In addition, we collected data with a water Cherenkov detector to determine the speed of the muon by varying the distance of separate detectors. By running a program in the Linux OS the speed of the muon was determined and analyzed. In this conference, we present data from our detector array together with our result of the speed of the muon determined to be 99% of the speed of light using the Cherenkov detector.