Related papers: Isotope production in thunderstorms
I argue that cosmic Gamma-ray Bursts (GRB) may be produced by collapses or mergers of stars made of `mirror' matter. The mirror neutrinos (which are sterile for our matter) produced at these events can oscillate into ordinary neutrinos. The…
Relativistic outflows with neutrons inevitably lead to inelastic collisions, and resulting subphotospheric gamma rays may explain prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts. In this model, hadronuclear, quasithermal neutrinos in the 10-100 GeV…
In the next years the FERMI gamma ray telescope and the Cherenkov telescopes will put very stringent constraints to models of gamma ray emission from galaxy clusters providing crucial information on relativistic particles in the…
Clusters of galaxies form through major merger and/or absorption of smaller groups. In fact, some characteristic structures such as cold fronts, which are likely relevant to moving substructures, are found by {\it Chandra}. It is expected…
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most explosive events after the big bang: their energy output corresponds to a sizeable fraction of a solar mass entirely converted into energy in a few seconds. Although many questions about their…
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…
A new nonthermal phenomenon caused by streaming cosmic rays (CRs) in the universe is proposed. The streaming CRs drive the return current of thermal electrons to compensate for the CR current. Then, electric fields are induced by the…
The blast-wave model for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been called into question by observations of spectra from GRBs that are harder than can be produced through optically thin synchrotron emission. If GRBs originate from the collapse of…
We examine the fate of fast electrons (with energies E>10 eV) in a thermal gas of primordial composition. To follow their interactions with the background gas, we construct a Monte Carlo model that includes: (1) electron-electron scattering…
A new theory for gamma-ray burst radiation is presented. In this theory, magnetic fields and relativistic electrons are created through plasma processes arising as a relativistic shell passes through the interstellar medium. The gamma-rays…
Under current conditions, the cosmic ray spectrum incident on the Earth is dominated by particles with energies < 1 GeV. Astrophysical sources including high energy solar flares, supernovae and gamma ray bursts produce high energy cosmic…
Solar flare observations are used to demonstrate the new technique of abundance determination based on gamma ray line emission produced by accelerated particle bombardment. Some of the implications of similar gamma ray line emission…
Gamma-ray bursts and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays provide an important testing ground for fundamental physics. A simple-minded analysis of some gamma-ray bursts would lead to a huge estimate of the overall energy emitted, and this…
Most cosmological models for gamma-ray bursts invoke the production of a ``fireball'' in a compact region, as indicated by the short time variability of the observed GRBs. The high density of $e^+e^-$ pairs in such fireballs inevitably…
During a winter thunderstorm on 2017 November 24, a strong burst of gamma rays with energies up to $\sim$10~MeV was detected coincident with a lightning discharge, by scintillation detectors installed at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power…
The existence of a new phenomena - giant electron-gamma bursts is established. The bursts are generated in thunderclouds as a result of the combined action of runaway breakdown and extensive atmosphere showers (RB-EAS). The experiments were…
The observation by the BATSE instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are distributed isotropically around the Earth but nonuniformly in distance has led to the widespread conclusion that GRBs are most…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are the most powerful events in the universe. They are capable of accelerating particles to very high energies, so are strong candidates as sources of detectable astrophysical neutrinos. We study the effects of…
Intense electromagnetic pulses interacting with a plasma can create a wake of plasma oscillations. Electrons trapped in such oscillations can be accelerated under certain conditions to very high energies. We study the conditions for the…
The FLUKA Monte Carlo program is used to predict the distributions of the muons which originate from primary cosmic gamma rays and reach sea level. The main result is the angular distribution of muons produced by vertical gamma rays which…