Particle Astrophysics

APR 01, 1991

A symbiosis is evolving: Astrophysicol observations are elucidating the nature of the elementary particles, while particle theory and experimental techniques address the dark as well as the showy components of the cosmos, and how it all began.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881288

Bernard Sadoulet

James W. Cronin

Particle astrophysics emerged in the 1980s as a new field at the junction of high‐energy astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics. This new experimental, observational and theoretical discipline concerns itself, for example, with the nature of dark matter; the detection of neutrinos from the Sun and from supernovae; the evidence for powerful acceleration mechanisms in the vicinity of neutron stars; and the suggestion that quantum fluctuation and topological singularities in the first moments of the cosmos played a role in the formation of the great structures we see today stretching over hundreds of millions of light‐years.

References

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More about the Authors

Bernard Sadoulet. University of California, Berkeley.

James W. Cronin. University of Chicago, Dugway, Utah.