From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!don
Newsgroups: net.physics
Title: cosmic rays
Article-I.D.: allegra.1253
Posted: Sat Apr 23 17:11:11 1983
Received: Mon Apr 25 01:06:40 1983

Subject: more than you want to know about cosmic rays

Super energetic cosmic rays are very rare.  Most cosmic rays are only a
few kev, altho it is hard to study them this close to the sun.  Very
low energy particles are reflected by the sun's magnetic field.

Things like quasars are thought to be driven by gravitation infall.
Nuclear processes cannot produce as much energy (a few percent mass to
energy conversion compared to 20 or 30 percent for collapse into a
black hole).  At one time scientists were mystified by these objects
because they radiated more energy than nuclear fusion could produce.
Most of this energy is in the form of X-rays and not terribly high per
particle.

I worked for several years with the HEAO-C satellite which had a
detector for the Heavy-Nuclei component of cosmic rays.  Most cosmic
rays are protons or helium, but we saw everything up to high energy
lead and platinum.  Like all elements beyond iron, these nuclei are
thought to be the product of super nova explosions ("rapid process")
and/or gradual neutron capture ("slow process").