Search

The existence of time correlations in detectors separated by distances much larger than the size of the highest energy extensive air showers (EAS) has been long discussed over the years. Several mechanisms have been proposed to justify the existence of such events and, in the last decade, some experiments have also tried to search for correlations on a large scale distance, beyond one hundred kilometers. The approaches were based on the construction of clusters of detectors placed at large relative distances, with the capability of selecting extensive air showers.

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) project is an extended array for cosmic rays survey. It was conceived by Antonino Zichichi and supported by the Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi” with the collaboration of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). This experiment is aimed to study cosmic rays of extreme high energy, and related phenomena. To achieve this goal, a network of nearly 50 muon telescopes has been installed in high schools, distributed throughout the Italian territory, either as single stations or clusters. During the second coordinated run of data taking, which ended in May 2016, 25 billion muon tracks were detected and reconstructed. This huge amount of data, allows us to undertake various studies: the dependence of the local muon flux on solar activity; the sky anisotropy on sub-TeV scale; event correlations, due to EAS, between clustered telescopes at distances from a few hundred meters to over a kilometre. The status of the project and some results will be presented.

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is a Centro Fermi - CERN - INFN - MIUR Collaboration Project, for the study of extremely high-energy cosmic rays, which exploits the Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology. The excellent time resolution and good tracking capability of this detector allows us to study Extensive Air Showers (EAS) with an array of telescopes distributed all over the Italian territory. Each telescope is installed in a High School, with the additional goal to introduce students to particle and astroparticle Physics. The EEE array is composed, so far, of 47 telescopes, each made of three MRPC planes, spanning more than 10 degrees in latitude and 11 in longitude, organized in clusters and single telescope stations. The status of the experiment and the results, obtained during two recent coordinated data taking periods, will be reported. The observation of Forbush decreases, coincidence events among different telescopes and the muon decay, using more than 5 billion tracks collected in the last few months, are of particular interest.