Related papers: From cosmic explosions to terrestrial fires?
It has been suggested that galactic shock asymmetry induced by our galaxy's infall toward the Virgo Cluster may be a source of periodicity in cosmic ray exposure as the solar system oscillates perpendicular to the galactic plane. Here we…
Gamma-ray bursts are short-lived, luminous explosions at cosmological distances, thought to originate from relativistic jets launched at the deaths of massive stars. They are among the prime candidates to produce the observed cosmic rays at…
Galactic cosmic rays are believed to be accelerated at supernova remnant shocks. Though very popular and robust, this conjecture still needs a conclusive proof. The strongest support to this idea is probably the fact that supernova remnants…
We shortly discuss several astrophysical scenarios leading to cosmic ray acceleration up to extremely high energies reaching the scale of 10^{20} eV. The processes suggested in the literature include acceleration at relativistic jet…
Solar flares occur due to the sudden release of energy stored in active-region magnetic fields. To date, the pre-cursors to flaring are still not fully understood, although there is evidence that flaring is related to changes in the…
Whether natural factors could interpret the rise of the Earth's surface temperature is still controversial. Though numerous recent researches have reported apparent correlations between solar activity and the Earth's climate, solar activity…
Due to climate change, the extreme wildfire has become one of the most dangerous natural hazards to human civilization. Even though, some wildfires may be initially caused by human activity, but the spread of wildfires is mainly determined…
The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic…
The present infrared brightness of a planet originates partly from the accretion energy that the planet gained during its formation and hence provides important constraints to the planet formation process. A planet cools down from a hot…
Understanding when global glaciations occur on Earth-like planets is a major challenge in climate evolution research. Most models of how greenhouse gases like CO2 evolve with time on terrestrial planets are deterministic, but the complex,…
Global warming arises from 'temperature forcing', a net imbalance between energy fluxes entering and leaving the climate system and arising within it. Humanity introduces temperature forcing through greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture,…
The diffuse background of very high energy extra-terrestrial neutrinos recently discovered with IceCube is compatible with that expected from cosmic ray interactions in the Galactic interstellar medium plus that expected from hadronic…
Carbon dioxide (CO2), an important trace species that is gradually increasing in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic activities, causes enhanced warming in the lower atmosphere. The increased concentration of CO2 in the upper atmosphere…
In this lecture I give an overview of shock acceleration, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the background radiation, and the resulting electron-photon cascade. I argue that while the origin of the…
Four significant events of rapid $^{14}$C increase have taken place within the past several thousand years. The physical origin of these rapid increases is still a mystery but must be associated with extremely energetic cosmic processes.…
Observations of open star clusters in the solar neighborhood are used to calculate local supernova (SN) rates for the past 510 million years (Myr). Peaks in the SN rates match passages of the Sun through periods of locally increased cluster…
The long-held notion that the highest-energy cosmic rays are of distant extragalactic origin is challenged by observations that events above $\sim 10^{20}$ eV do not exhibit the expected high-energy cutoff from photopion production off the…
Ongoing observing projects like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and future missions offer the chance to characterize Earth-like exoplanetary atmospheres. Thereby, M-dwarfs are preferred targets for transit observations, for example,…
The temperature of the cosmic microwave background increases with redshift; at sufficiently high redshift it becomes possible for ultrahigh-energy photons and electrons to produce muons and pions through interactions with background…
Recent high energy gamma-ray observations of both single supernova remnants and superbubbles, together with observations of supernovae, star formation regions, and local cosmic ray composition, now provide an integrated framework tying…