Contents and Methods

The EEE Project consists of a network of tracer telescopes for cosmic rays, each made up of three Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber MRPC detectors with a large sensitive area of 2 m2). 

In figure 1, on the right, one of the telescopes is shown. The EEE network currently consists of 60 telescopes, making EEE the largest cosmic ray observatory based on MRPC technology. Figure 1 (left) shows the geographical distribution of the schools currently participating in the EEE Project. The red and orange circles indicate the location of the school telescopes and in INFN locations respectively, while the blue circles indicate the schools participating in the project without a telescope.

As previously highlighted, the involvement of students begins with the construction of the detectors at CERN and continues with their installation in schools, universities and public research bodies CREF, INFN Sections.

Figure 1 Left: distribution of the EEE Project telescopes (red and orange circles) and The data acquired by the individual telescopes allow us to study the characteristics of the local flux of secondary cosmic rays. The temporal synchronization of the telescopes then allows the research and study of extended atmospheric showers (between stations at distances of up to a few km). The distribution of the detectors across the territory, organized in clusters or in single stations, offers the unique possibility in the world of searching for correlations between stations located hundreds of km apart: any positive signal would be a direct indication of hypothesized but not yet experimentally verified mechanisms.

Starting from 2014, the EEE Project is organized into coordinated data acquisition phases called Runs, the duration of which coincides in time with the school year. In this period the telescopes of the network are in operation at the same time and maximum attention is paid by all participants to the operation of the telescopes, to guarantee maximum efficiency of the observatory; to this end, students and professors participate in periodic meetings, the Run Coordination Meetings, which allow them to have and provide updates on the status of the network. The health emergency linked to COVID19 led to the interruption of experimental activities but the EEE Project continued to organize monthly meetings, including seminars on topics not directly connected to the activities of the EEE Project in the meeting programme. A (not complete) list of meetings and topics addressed in 2022 is shown in figure 2.