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Joint Astrophysics Colloquium
Ubi Wichoski
LPS About 40 years ago, the first cosmic ray particle with energy in excess of 1020 eV was detected. At these energies, the flux of cosmic ray particles is extremely low what makes their detection very hard. This creates serious obstacles for the determination of their sources, energy spectrum, anisotropy, and composition. In addition, the physical mechanism that provides these particles with huge energies is not known. An overview of the field of cosmic ray physics will be presented, with a discussion of the challenges posed by the ultra high energy cosmic rays and of what can be expected in the near future.
Thursday, September 26th 2002, 12:00 |