Soramame App FAQ
What is Soramame?
Soramame is an app for detecting cosmic rays using ordinary smartphones or tablets. By utilizing CMOS image sensors in mobile devices, Soramame enables anyone to detect and visualize cosmic ray events easily.
How does the app work?
When cosmic rays hit the CMOS sensor in your device, they generate tiny signals. Soramame captures these signals as images and visualizes them in real-time. Detected events are also uploaded to a shared server, allowing you to view cosmic ray events detected by users worldwide.
What is "Interval," "Rate," and "Threshold"?
- Interval: Time between detections of cosmic ray candidate events.
- Rate: Frequency of cosmic ray detections. Helps distinguish actual events from noise.
- Threshold: Brightness level (0-255) for differentiating signal from noise. Lower values detect more cosmic rays but may increase noise.
Can I save detected images?
The app doesn't save images to your device, but you can view real-time images on the server. Tap the graph icon at the top right to see detected events and a frequency graph.
Do I need to allow location access?
Location access is not mandatory, but enabling it is strongly recommended. The goal is to detect simultaneous cosmic ray events across multiple devices, potentially discovering air showers. Sharing your location significantly contributes to this scientific effort.
Educational benefits and citizen science
Soramame is ideal for educational use, fostering scientific curiosity and understanding of invisible cosmic phenomena. Students can experiment by changing conditions such as altitude, shielding, and time to gather meaningful data. The app also supports collaborative learning through data sharing, making it perfect for citizen science projects.
Contributing to cutting-edge research
Cosmic rays include ultra-high-energy particles whose origins and acceleration mechanisms remain some of the greatest unsolved mysteries in modern physics. Soramame aims to contribute significantly to this frontier of scientific research by leveraging billions of CMOS sensors in everyday devices around the globe. By enabling high-resolution observation of cosmic ray air showers—particularly in their high-density "core regions"—Soramame helps researchers tackle fundamental questions about cosmic particles and their origins. Your participation can directly support groundbreaking discoveries in astrophysics.
Repurpose your unused smartphone
Why not give your old smartphones or tablets a new purpose? Soramame transforms unused devices into powerful tools for cosmic ray research, contributing to important scientific discoveries.