Aragats cosmic-ray station
Estación de rayos cósmicos del Aragats
- Date
- 1943 · confidence medium
- Place
- Mount Aragats, Aragatsotn, Armenia
- Credited to
- Artem Alikhanian and Abram Alikhanov (future Yerevan Physics Institute)
- People
- 👤 Artyom Alikhanian1908–1978
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
A high-altitude laboratory at about 3,200 m with cosmic-ray shower detectors, set up during the Second World War. It is the origin of Armenian particle physics and remains active.
The Alikhanov brothers and Alikhanian announced in the late 1940s intermediate-mass particles («varitrons») that did not turn out to be real; the entry's value is the station, not that claim. The founding year (1943) is the one given by the laboratory.
What it led to
- the Yerevan Physics Institute (Alikhanian Laboratory, 1943-1944) and its synchrotron
- studies of extensive air showers
- space-weather monitors on Aragats