Cosmic Experience brings cosmic-ray research outside the walls of universities and research institutes. The importance of science being a part of society is also clear to the physicists of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargüe, Argentina. There, various outreach activities are being organized. For example, school children picked the names for most of the 1600 cosmic-ray detectors located in the pampa, near their villages. The physicists are regarded not as outsiders, but as a part of the city: this becomes clear on Malargüe Day!

Once every year, everybody celebrates the founding of Malargüe as an independent city, by parading through town. All local schools, the military, sports associations and, of course, the physicists, participate in this huge happening. This picture shows one of the researchers of the Cosmic Experience crew on the right, next to Nobel Prize winner and founder of the observatory Jim Cronin.