Cosmic rays are particles from outer space, typically protons, travelling at almost the speed of light. When the most energetic of these particles strike the atmosphere of our planet, they interact with atomic nuclei in the atmosphere and produce cascades of secondary particles that shower down to the Earth's surface. These extensive air showers, as they are known, are similar to the cascades of particles that are created in collisions inside particle colliders such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the next LHC, run starting in 2021, the smallest of the LHC experiments—the LHCf experiment—is set to probe the first interaction that triggers these cosmic showers.