One of the attractions of that lifestyle is unique to physicists. When the shuttle passes through a zone in its orbit called the South Atlantic Anomaly, astronauts are exposed to large doses of cosmic rays, high-energy particles from the Sun or distant galaxies, which leave a wake of visible light as they pass through a dark-adapted human eyeball. “In space you can get in touch with your quantum self,” Dr. Grunsfeld said. “I was a human cosmic ray detector.” He said he could identify the different kinds of particles zooming through his eyeball by how bright the flashes were.
Posted April 14, 2009 at 10:25am
