1. Because it is prohibitively expensive to go to the Moon and build and staff a permanent higher-energy particle laboratory.
2. Because research scientists prefer working under controlled conditions, with a high-density beam of energy of finely-adjusted, known specifications that they can turn ON/OFF or vary the intensity of, rather than waiting for the occasional cosmic particle of unspecified energy to wander into their set-up strike their sensor.
The flux of high-energy cosmic rays incident upon the surface of the Moon is deadly to humans. Exposure (unshielded) for just 15 minutes might be the equivalent of a thousand chest x-rays... But the beam from, e.g., the most-powerful Earth-based particle accelerators would burn a hole through your body in seconds.
Particles there impact with 1000 to 10,000 times the energy we could ever produce in a collider.
Having, e.g., two extremely-focussed, pencil-thin artificial beams striking each other in a frontal (head-on) collision can result in much higher yields than observing a random, stray cosmic particle striking a fixed (i.e., motionless) target.
Regards,
You took the words right out of my mouth Alexander! :o)
Having, e.g., two extremely-focussed, pencil-thin artificial beams striking each other in a frontal (head-on) collision can result in much higher yields than observing a random, stray cosmic particle striking a fixed (i.e., motionless) target.
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they’re trying to do fusion with lasers at one of the california labs. couldn’t they do the same thing with gama rays. if so would the process be more or less energy intensive. (ie higher or lower electricity bill)