The Highest‐Energy Cosmic Rays

JAN 01, 1998

What in the cosmos can possibly be accelerating protons to 10²⁰ electron volts and beyond? And how can they preserve such extreme energies while plowing through the cosmic microwave background on their way to us?

DOI: 10.1063/1.882132

Thomas O'Halloran

Pierre Sokolsky

Shigeru Yoshida

The unexpected discovery of the cosmic microwave background by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965 is now the centerpiece of our understanding of the Big Bang and the subsequent evolution of the universe. (See PHYSICS TODAY, November 1997, page 32.) The discovery also set off something of a race to verify one of its implications for cosmic rays. In 1966, Kenneth Greisen (Cornell University) pointed out that the most energetic cosmic‐ray particles would be affected by interaction with the ubiquitous photons of this microwave background. Greisen predicted that, if cosmic‐ray sources were far enough away from us and if their energy spectrum extended beyond $10^{20} eV,$ then the ultra‐high‐energy protons and nuclei would interact inelastically with the backgound radiation.

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More about the Authors

Thomas O'Halloran. University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign.

Pierre Sokolsky. University of Utah, Salt Lake, City.

Shigeru Yoshida. University of Tokyo's Institute for Cosmic Ray Research.