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Date : Nov 25 '95, 15:21                                                       
From : i_ufo-l                                                 1:330/202
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Subj : (fwd) COSMIC RAY MYSTERY MAY BE SOLVED                                
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From: ur-valhalla!uk.sun.com!Dave.Tilbury (David Tilbury - Sun UK)
Subject: (fwd) COSMIC RAY MYSTERY MAY BE SOLVED
Message-ID: <9511251521.AA23739@marvin.uk.sun.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 1995 15:21:19 GMT

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From NASANews@mercury.hq.nasa.gov Tue Nov 21 23:55 GMT 1995
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 16:14:05 -0500
From: NASANews@luna.osf.hq.nasa.gov (NASA HQ Public Affairs Office)
To: press-release-com2@mercury.hq.nasa.gov
Subject: Cosmic Ray Mystery May Be Solved

Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC                November 21, 1995
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

Jim Sahli
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone:  301/286-0697)

RELEASE:  95-208

COSMIC RAY MYSTERY MAY BE SOLVED

       Physicists from Japan and the United States have 
discovered a possible solution to the puzzle of the origin of 
high energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth from all 
directions in space.  

   Using data from the Japanese/U.S. X-ray astronomical 
satellite ASCA, physicists have found what they term "the 
first strong observational evidence" for the production of 
these particles in the shock wave of a supernova remnant, the 
expanding fireball produced by the explosion of a star. 

       "We are very pleased to contribute to the solution of 
an 83-year old mystery," said Dr. Koyama, of the Department 
of Physics at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.  

       Cosmic rays were discovered in 1912 by the Austrian 
physicist Victor Hess, whosubsequently received the Nobel 
Prize in Physics for that work.  They are subatomic 
particles, mostly electrons and protons, that travel near the 
speed of light.  Ever since their discovery, scientists have 
debated where cosmic rays come from and how ordinary 
subatomic particles can be accelerated to such high speeds. 
Supernova remnants have long been thought to provide the high 
energy cosmic rays, but the evidence has been lacking until now.

       The international team of investigators used the 
satellite to determine that cosmic rays are generated at a 
high rate in the remains of the Supernova of 1006 AD -- which 
appeared to medieval viewers to be as bright as the Moon -- 
and that they are accelerated to high velocities by a process 
first suggested by the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1949. 

       The satellite contains telescopes for simultaneously 
taking images and spectra of X-rays from celestial sources, 
allowing astronomers to distinguish different types of X-ray 
emission from nearby regions of the same object.

     The tell-tale clue to the discovery was the detection of 
two oppositely-located regions in the rapidly expanding 
supernova remnant, the debris from the stellar explosion. The 
two regions glow intensely in what is called synchrotron 
radiation, which is produced when electrons move at nearly 
the speed of light through a magnetic field in space.  The 
remainder of the supernova remnant, in contrast, produces 
ordinary "thermal" X-ray emission, meaning radiation from hot 
gases such as oxygen, neon, and gaseous forms of magnesium, 
silicon, sulfur, and iron.  

       The cosmic rays are accelerated in the two regions 
that glow with synchrotron radiation, the physicists 
concluded.  Specifically, charged particles are accelerated 
to nearly the speed of light and energies of 100 trillion 
electron volts as they bounce off turbulent regions inside 
the shock front from the supernova explosion.  This amount of 
energy is over 50 times higher than can be produced in the most powerful
particle accelerator on Earth.  Like a ping 
pong ball bouncing between a table and a paddle while the 
paddle is brought ever closer to the table, an electron, 
proton or an atomic nucleus bounces back and forth within the 
supernova remnant, continually gaining speed, until it 
attains a high energy.  This process was first proposed as a 
theory by Fermi in 1949.  

       "Since we found cosmic ray acceleration under way in 
the remnant of Supernova 1006, this process probably occurs 
in other young supernova remnants," according to Dr. Robert 
Petre, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory for 
High Energy Astrophysics, Greenbelt, MD.  Astronomers 
estimate that there is a supernova explosion in the Milky Way 
galaxy, which contains the Earth, about once every 30 years.  
Supernova 1006 is classified by astronomers as the explosion 
of a white dwarf star, known as a Type IA supernova.  Other 
types of supernovae, involving the collapse of massive stars 
in the Milky Way, and in galaxies beyond, may also produce 
cosmic rays.

       The discovery observations were made with solid-state 
X-ray cameras on the ASCA satellite, which was launched from 
Kagoshima Space Center, Japan, aboard a Japanese M-3S-II 
rocket on Feb. 20, 1993.  Major contributions to the 
scientific instrumentation were provided by Goddard's 
Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics and by the Center for 
Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

       "The capability to obtain spatially resolved X-ray 
spectra -- that is to determine the different spectra at 
various locations in an image -- is a tremendous advance in 
space technology," said Dr. Stephen Holt, Director of Space 
Sciences at Goddard.

       Approximately 25 cosmic rays bombard one square inch 
every second in space just outside the Earth's atmosphere.  
The atmosphere shields the surface of the Earth from these 
"primary" cosmic rays.  However, collisions of the primary 
cosmic rays with atoms in the upper atmosphere produce lower 
moving "secondary" cosmic rays, some of which reach ground 
level and even may penetrate to depths of many feet below the ground.

                        - end -


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