He explained that ground-based radars are able to track objects of about 10cm (3.9 inches) and sometimes smaller, depending on altitude above the earth, while other sensors can detect particles down to about 5mm (0.2 inches) in low earth orbit.
It is designed to detect showers of billions of secondary particles created when cosmic ray particles rain down on the Earth.
Aeroplane avionics, for example, are vulnerable to the perturbations caused by neutron particles cascading down through the high atmosphere during a storm.
When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.
Two beams of particles will be fired down pipes running through the magnets - travelling in opposite directions at close to the speed of light.
Moreover, once the particles in the capsules have settled down they stay put.
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But that would suggest that, when things had cooled down a bit, these particles would eventually have annihilated one another leaving nothing but energy behind.
Heavy, gritty particles seem to be sitting at around 8, 000ft (2440m) , while lower down in the atmosphere there are sulphurous chemicals and finer dust particles.
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It says the burns are usually multiple and deep, down to the bone, and the particles will continue to burn unless deprived of oxygen.
"A researcher I was speaking to recently reckons green walls in urban canyon environments (areas where walls are higher than the width of the road separating them) are more effective than trees at collecting particles because the way the wind eddies around and then moves down the wall, " Laurence said.
This theory says that most of the forces of nature, the objects around us and our own existence, are all down to the interaction of the Higgs with 16 other particles.
However, the cat (or, rather, subatomic particles that behave like the cat) has proved hard to hunt down in practice because such superpositions of states are fragile and easily disrupted phenomena.
Also, scientists at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have been able to build a nano-thin layer of particles of titanium dioxide, a substance that reacts with sunlight to break down dirt and other organic material.
They built a thin layer, or "nanostructure, " using minute particles of titanium dioxide, a substance that reacts with sunlight to break down dirt and other organic material and can be coated on cotton to keep the fabric clean.
Several stages of cooling are needed to slow them down before they can be trapped, forming a matchstick-sized cloud of around 30, 000 particles.
Although he offers some points of light -- putting an aerosol layer of fine particles into the stratosphere to reflect back sunlight may, he says, could buy us some time by slowing down the rate of decline for a decade -- his projections are on the whole brutally pessimistic.
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