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☄️ Cosmic Ray Air Showers

Interactive 3D atmosphere column where adjusting a primary cosmic ray's energy shows it cascading into a shower of secondary particles branching down through simulated atmospheric layers.

Space & Astronomy3DModerate60 FPS

A primary cosmic ray enters the top of a simulated 20 km atmosphere column and cascades generation by generation into a branching shower of secondary particles that rains down toward a ground detector array.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Using a Heitler-style cascade model, particle count roughly doubles each generation while energy per particle halves, until the critical energy is reached — the point of shower maximum, X_max, which shifts with primary energy, particle type, and arrival angle.

🎮 How to Use

Raise the primary energy to watch the cascade grow deeper and wider, switch between a proton, an iron nucleus, and a gamma ray to compare how X_max shifts, tilt the zenith angle, and toggle the muon component to see which secondaries punch through to the ground.

💡 Did You Know?

The highest-energy cosmic ray ever recorded, the "Oh-My-God" particle (~3 × 10²⁰ eV), struck the atmosphere with roughly the kinetic energy of a fast-pitched baseball packed into a single subatomic particle.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D atmosphere column where adjusting a primary cosmic ray's energy shows it cascading into a shower of secondary particles branching down through simulated atmospheric layers.

cosmic-raysair-showersparticle-cascadesastrophysicsatmospheric-physicsastronomy

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install