Related papers: Cosmic radioactivities
Radionuclides with half-lives ranging from some years to billions of years presumably synthesized outside of the solar system are now recorded in `live' or `fossil' form in various types of materials, like meteorites or the galactic cosmic…
Energy in stars is provided by nuclear reactions, which, in many cases, produce radioactive nuclei. When stable nuclei are irradiated by a flux of protons or neutrons, capture reactions push stable matter out of stability into the regime of…
The short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) have a half-life $\leq$ 100 Myr. The $\gamma$-ray observations and excess abundance of their daughter nuclides in various meteoritic phases confirm the existence of SLRs in the Galaxy and early solar…
Meteorites, which are remnants of solar system formation, provide a direct glimpse into the dynamics and evolution of a young stellar object (YSO), namely our Sun. Much of our knowledge about the astrophysical context of the birth of the…
We propose to advance investigations of electromagnetic radiation originating in atomic nuclei beyond its current infancy to a true astronomy. This nuclear emission is independent from conditions of gas, thus complements more traditional…
In addition to long-lived radioactive nuclei like U and Th isotopes, which have been used to measure the age of the Galaxy, also radioactive nuclei with half-lives between 0.1 and 100 million years (short-lived radionuclides, SLRs) were…
In the late nineteenth century, Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity and thus the physics of weak interactions, well before atomic and quantum physics was known. The different types of radioactive decay, alpha, beta, and gamma…
This chapter presents a (partial) review of the information we can derive on the early history of the Solar System from radioactive nuclei of very different half-life, which were recognized to have been present alive in pristine solids. In…
A revolution in nuclear physics is underway. If you know hadron physics you also know that it will last long, as most past developments in nuclear physics have shown. It will take many decades of dedicated efforts of theorists and…
"The investigation into the possible effects of cosmic rays on living organisms will also offer great interest." - Victor F. Hess, Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1936 High-energy radiation bursts are commonplace in our Universe. From nearby…
The most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum bears the purest clues to the synthesis of atomic nuclei in the universe. The decay of radioactive species, synthesized in stellar environments and ejected into the interstellar…
The measurement of gamma rays at MeV energies from cosmic radioactivities is one of the key tools for nuclear astrophysics, in its study of nuclear reactions and how they shape objects such as massive stars and supernova explosions.…
An attempt is made, probably for the first time, to understand the origin of the solar system in context with the evolution of the galaxy as a natural consequence of the birth of several generations of stellar clusters. The galaxy is…
Since more than a century we investigate cosmic particles coming from the Universe with the aim of understanding their nature, their origin and how they are accelerated. So far, cosmic rays have provided many impressive results, giving…
The presence of excesses of short-lived radionuclides in the early solar system evidenced in meteorites has been taken as testament to close encounters with exotic nucleosynthetic sources, including supernovae or AGB stars. An analysis of…
Long-lived radioactive by-products of nucleosynthesis provide an opportunity to trace the flow of ejecta away from its sources for times beyond where ejecta can be seen otherwise. Gamma rays from such radioactive decay in interstellar space…
Radioactivity was discovered as a by-product of searching for elements with suitable chemical properties. Understanding its characteristics led to the development of nuclear physics, understanding that unstable configurations of nucleons…
Cosmic radiation backgrounds are a constraint on life, and their distribution will affect the Galactic Habitable Zone. Life on Earth has developed in the context of these backgrounds, and characterizing event rates will elaborate the…
Establishing the origin of short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) with half-lives $\leq$ 100 Myr has important implications for the astrophysical context of our Sun's birth place. We review here the different origins proposed for the variety of…
The possibility that the Fermi scale is the only fundamental energy scale of Nature is under serious consideration at present, yet cosmic rays may already have provided direct evidence of new physics at a much higher scale. The recent…