On Wednesday, China launched construction of a high-mountain observatory to monitor cosmic rays in the southwest of the country.
The object will be located in Sichuan Province, 4,410 meters above sea level. The observatory is reported to cover an area of million square meters. With a gamma rays bursts detector, the facility will become the world second most expensive observatory monitoring cosmic rays after IceCube Neutrino in the Antarctic.
Construction of Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) is estimated at $180 m, instead of $157 m reported last year, chief scientist of LHAASO and research fellow at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cao Zhen, told Global Times.
According to him, the project will be implemented in two stages. The first stage should be completed over the course of 5 years, the second one – within six or seven years.
