Thanks to the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) and its work using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to detect the Higgs boson, there has been a surge of interest in studying the fundamental building blocks of the universe. CERN is able to do this thanks to the enormous power of the Large Hadron Collider, which can operate with a beam energy of almost 14 TeV. For comparison, some cosmic rays have energies up to 3 × 1020 eV. A continuous stream of these cosmic rays falls on the Earth, creating a chain reaction of particles as they interact with atmospheric molecules. By the time many of these particles reach the Earth’s surface, they have mutated into “muons” that can be detected by Geiger-Muller tubes (GMTs).
[Robert Hart] is building a series of individual cosmic ray detectors that could be spread across the landscape to show how these cosmic rays (technically particles) get into muon streams. This is a civilian science project masquerading as an art installation.
At the heart of each individual device will be a set of three Russian Geiger-Muller tubes for particle detection and an RGB LED that lights up depending on the type of particle detected. There will also be an audio amplifier with a small 1W speaker for sound reproduction. The solar panels are used to charge the batteries that power the logic and high-voltage converters needed to create the GMT array. The GMT signal is passed through the pulse shaper, then through the logic gates, and finally amplified to drive the LEDs and the audio amplifier. Depending on the direction and order of particles passing through the GMT, the device will produce a bright flash of one of four colors – red, green, blue or white. It also triggers one of three notes – C, F, G, or a combination of both. The logic part uses match detection, which worked well in its early iterations. A coincidence detector is a type of logical AND that produces a result when two input events occur close enough to each other in time. He experimented with several designs before settling on a trio of 555 monostable multivibrators providing initial pulse shaping and then some I gates. The clean PCB design brings it all together.
While the prototype is in its wooden box, it will experiment with different housings and mounting options to see what works best – lampposts, spheres suspended from trees or tripods, or placed on the ground like paving stones. Future prototypes and setups may include software, pulse stacking, and solid state detectors. A video of his current version of the detector is embedded below, but there are some more interesting videos worth watching on his project page. If this interests you, check out the CERN brochure – LHC, A Simple Explained Guide to Particle Physics and LHC Information.
chill. There was a big butt at Burning Man a few years ago. https://douglasruuska.com/cosmic-praise/
You can also make this version with one of the lightning detector settings. It can also be fun to bring lightning into your home.
Explained my project well and I was caught. My goal is to inspire the public to learn more about what we know about the physical universe, matter, vastness and age. Art installations that look beautiful at first glance may be living manifestations of the rain of subatomic particles that keep appearing all around us, but what is art?
I agree, and the supply of cheap Russian pipes will run out, having difficulty getting quantities. So I’ll be working on a solid state version soon 
https://hackaday.io/project/1749-solid-state-ionising-radiation-detector
There are many more on our Russian or Ukrainian sites. I have seen prices ranging from $9 to $15 per tube.
”By the time many of these particles have reached the Earth’s surface, they have mutated into ‘muons’.”
As far as I understand (but it was many years in physics class), muons are actually created in the upper atmosphere and reach the Earth’s surface only because of their speed. Their half-life is very short, and due to relativity making them longer-lived in our frame of reference, they can only survive surface travel.
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Post time: Jun-02-2023
