Related papers: Cosmic ray-driven bioenergetics for Life in Molecu…
We propose a new hypothesis for the origin of the major part of non-solar hadronic cosmic rays (CRs) at all energies: highly relativistic, narrowly collimated jets from the birth or collapse of neutron stars (NSs) in our Galaxy accelerate…
Cosmic rays are crucial for the chemistry of molecular clouds and their evolution. They provide essential ionizations, dissociations, heating and energy to the cold, dense cores. As cosmic rays pierce through the clouds they are attenuated…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays is still unknown. The discovery of their sources will reveal the workings of the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. Current observations show a spectrum consistent with an…
We simulate the evolution of relativistic electrons injected into the medium of a small galaxy cluster by a central radio galaxy, studying how the initial jet power affects the dispersal and the emission properties of radio plasma. By…
The possible sources of light nuclei populations observed recently below the geomagnetic cutoff by the AMS experiment are discussed in terms of nuclear processes: fragmentation of the incoming flux of cosmic helium on atmospheric nuclei,…
It is widely believed that supernova remnants are the best candidate sources for the observed cosmic ray flux up to the knee, i.e. up to ~PeV energies. Indeed, the gamma-ray spectra of some supernova remnants can be well explained by…
The first sources of ionizing radiation to condense out of the dark and neutral IGM sent ionization fronts sweeping outward through their surroundings, overtaking other condensed objects and photoevaporating them. This feedback of universal…
In cosmic ray physics extensive progress has been made in recent years, both concerning theory and observation. The vast details in direct, indirect and secondary detections on the one hand provide the basis for a detailed modeling of the…
In a recent paper, Elmegreen (2000) has made a cogent case, from an observational point of view, that the lifetimes of molecular clouds are comparable to their dynamical timescales. If so, this has important implications for the mechanisms…
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays remains a matter of debate, but supernova remnants are commonly considered to be the main place where high-energy cosmic rays are accelerated. Nevertheless, current models predict cosmic-ray spectra that…
We review the thermal history of the Universe. We obtain a new estimate for the thermal history of the Earth over the past four billion years using a biological thermometer based on (1) a rough estimate of the absolute time calibration of…
In this paper we discuss the properties of the quasi-steady state cosmological model (QSSC) developed in 1993 in its role as a cyclic model of the universe driven by a negative energy scalar field. We discuss the origin of such a scalar…
It is presumed that the observed cosmic rays up to about $3\times 10^{18}$ eV are of Galactic origin, the particles being the ones which are found in the composition of the stellar winds of stars that explode as supernova into the…
There is mounting evidence from observations of long duration gamma ray bursts (GRBs), supernova remnants (SNR) and the supernova (SN) explosion 1987A, that SN explosions eject highly relativistic bipolar jets of plasmoids (cannonballs) of…
Cosmic rays are an essential ingredient in the evolution of the interstellar medium, as they dominate the ionisation of the dense molecular gas, where stars and planets form. However, since they are efficiently scattered by the galactic…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
After recombination the cosmic gas was left in a cold and neutral state. However, as the first stars and black holes formed within early galactic systems, their UV and X-ray radiation induced a gradual phase transition of the intergalactic…
We critically review the common belief that ultrahigh energy cosmic rays are protons or atomic nuclei with masses not exceeding that of iron. We find that heavier nuclei are indeed possible, and discuss possible sources and acceleration…
Ultrarelativistic particles called cosmic rays permeate the Milky Way, propagating through the Galactic turbulent magnetic fields. The mechanisms under which these particles increase their energy can be reasonably described by current…
The detection of high-energy particles, cosmic rays (CRs), deep inside the heliosphere implies that there are, at least, three distinctly different stages in the lifetime of a CR particle: acceleration, propagation in the interstellar…