The first of the 24 cosmic sensors for Cosmic Experience has been assembled and is currently undergoing tests.

The core of the detector is the big block of scintillator shown on the right. This piece of plastic is doped with a special chemical substance that emits flashes of light when elementary particles pass through the material.

The scintillator block is wrapped in reflecting foil that keeps daylight outside and the light generated by the elementary particle inside.

It is then put inside a wooden box for mechanical shielding.

One end of the wooden box houses an electronics compartment with three photomultipliers that transform the faint light pulses into an electrical signal.

The electronics use the signal of two out of the three photomultipliers, allowing the detector to work even if one of them fails. The strenght of the electrical signal is sent digitally to a central processing unit.

This central processing unit contains a field programmable gate array that allows all sorts of combinations of the 24 sensor units to be used to steer the music and visuals.

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