Cosmic rays energies can exceed $10^{8}$ TeV, way higher than the energy scale achieved in the LHC or that can be achieved in the near future.
cannot we just use them to study fundamental interactions at such extreme energy scales, instead of LHC?
What are the difficulties in guiding and channeling such super high energetic particles and make them collide to probe fundamental physics at such super energy regime?
Answer
Energetic cosmic rays are rare, as @John Rennie states in his answer, and the detectors to measure their effect cover kilometers. One high energy entrant creates what is called an air shower and it is measured as @dmckee describes.
It is not possible to use them as an incoming beam because we do not know what they are ( except in the case of gamma rays and neutrinos, because they need special detectors), so we do not know the incoming beam, and do not know where the interaction happened. They are interesting events but new physics can not be garnered from the observations.
The observations are useful for astrophysics though and cosmological theories.
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