Latest Astroparticle physics Stories

SWRI -- When Voyager 1 finally crossed the "termination shock" at the edge of interstellar space in December 2004, space physicists anticipated the long-sought discovery of the source of anomalous cosmic rays. These cosmic rays, among the most energetic particle radiation in the solar system, are thought to be produced at the termination shock - the boundary at the edge of the solar system where the million-mile-per-hour solar wind abruptly slows. A mystery unfolded instead when...

ESA -- Cosmic space is filled with continuous, diffuse high-energy radiation. To find out how this energy is produced, the scientists behind ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory have tried an unusual method: observing Earth from space.During a four-phase observation campaign started on January 24th this year, continued until February 9th, Integral has been looking at Earth. Needing complex control operations from the ground, the satellite has been kept in a fixed orientation in space,...

DENVER, Colo. -- An international science group Tuesday chose Colorado as the site of a $50 million observatory to measure the cosmic rays that continually bombard the Earth. The Pierre Auger Collaboration said the observatory - a sprawling 40-mile-by-40-mile array of remotely monitored sensors - will be built in the southeast corner of Colorado about 180 miles southeast of Denver. It will be a counterpart to the collaboration's Southern Hemisphere observatory, in Argentina. Jim Sites,...

NASA -- A NASA-funded scientist has produced a new type of picture of the Earth from space, which complements the familiar image of our "blue marble". This new picture is the first detailed image of our planet radiating gamma rays, a type of light that is millions to billions of times more energetic than visible light. The image portrays how the Earth is constantly bombarded by particles from space. These particles, called cosmic rays, hit our atmosphere and produce the gamma-ray...

Zurich --  Ghostly haloes of dark matter as heavy as the earth and as large as our solar system were the first structures to form in the universe, according to new calculations from scientists at the University of Zurich, published in this week's issue of Nature. Our own galaxy still contains quadrillions of these halos with one expected to pass by Earth every few thousand years, leaving a bright, detectable trail of gamma rays in its wake, the scientists say. Day to day, countless random...