Lamar hopes to find relief with $50 million cosmic ray observatory

Lamar officials and business people were ecstatic Tuesday after learning an international scientific group will build a $50 million observatory in southeastern Colorado to measure mysterious, powerful cosmic rays.

The observatory, an array of remotely monitored water tanks that will detect the rays, would be dotted over 35 square miles of private land in Baca, Bent and Prowers counties, about 100 miles southeast of Colorado Springs.

The observatory would be based at Lamar Community College, where a visitor center would be built. The project is expected to generate 12 permanent jobs at the observatory, which won't be built for perhaps two years.

Another dozen physicists would be in the area year-round, and about 250 scientists are expected to visit at least once a year with their families.

The decision, announced Tuesday morning in Paris, couldn't come at a better time for southeastern Colorado. The region has been battered by drought; low prices on agricultural products; uncertainty about the future of a major employer, a bus manufacturer; and an onslaught of Front Range cities seeking to buy water rights from longtime farm families.

"I think the avenues are endless that may come behind this," said Lamar City Administrator Jeff Anderson, citing expected benefits for hotels, restaurants, the college and perhaps new jobs in observatoryrelated technology fields. "It has been a difficult few years, but we are optimistic about what this may bring to the area."

His wife, Jan, executive director of Southeast Colorado Enterprise Development, added, "Getting well feels very good."

The Pierre Auger Collaboration, named for the physicist who discovered cosmic rays, is an international effort involving about 300 scientists from 19 countries. It operates a similar observatory over 70 square miles in Argentina.

The Lamar area was chosen for the Northern Hemisphere observatory over Millard County, Utah.

Anderson said more than 950 landowners in the three counties have expressed interest in allowing the water tanks on their land in exchange for a property tax credit.

The observatory would be made up of an array of particle detectors -- essentially plastic or fiberglass tanks 4 to 5 feet tall and 12 feet across filled with purified water -- spaced one mile apart.

When a cosmic ray passes through the water, it will create what the organization calls a "shock front of light" that can be seen by special tubes to be installed in the tanks. That information will be transmitted by radios to the observatory in Lamar.

The observatory also plans to install special instruments called photomultipliers that can, on moonless, cloudless nights, see the fluorescence created by nitrogen molecules in cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays, first discovered in 1912, are generated deep in space and are carried toward Earth on magnetic fields. When they strike the Earth's surface, they create a shower of lower energy particles, about one hundred of which pass through our bodies every second, according to the organization.

For decades, scientists thought cosmic rays simply consisted of low- and mediumenergy particles consisting of protons but sometimes larger nuclei. In 1991, a detector in the Utah desert called the Fly's Eye captured the highest energy cosmic ray ever observed, shattering scientists' previous notions about the mysterious phenomenon.

Today, scientists believe a single particle from these most powerful cosmic rays -- 100 million times the proton energy achieved in the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- falls on one square kilometer of Earth every century. Observatories such as the one to be located in Lamar have confirmed that one particle from slightly less powerful cosmic rays falls on one square kilometer of Earth every week.

Axel Thurner, plant manager for C F Maier Composites Inc. of Lamar, doesn't pretend to understand such complexities. But he can sense an opportunity when it falls out of the sky.

Memorial Day, Thurner escorted a dozen European and South American scientists through his plant, which makes fiberglass tanks for the fish industry. The scientists were interested in whether his 60 employees might be able to construct the tanks needed to capture cosmic rays.

"They all spoke like seven languages," Thurner said of his visitors. "They were some smart people."

The locals aren't slouches, either, he said. He reckons the scientific organization and local business folks will soon start speaking the common language of money.

"We're sitting right in it," he said. "People have been worried about our other industries. It sure would boost the economy if we could add quite a few jobs.

"I'm definitely excited."

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