History of Astroparticle Physics and its Components

Abstract

This article gives an outline of the historical events that led to the formation of contemporary astroparticle physics. As a starting point for analyzing the history of astroparticle physics this article will review the various, yet scattered pieces of historical work that have been done so far. To make the picture more complete it will then give a brief survey of the most important fields that have played a role in the development of astroparticle physics as we know it today. It will conclude with an overview of the historical questions that are still open and the rich philosophical implications that lie behind those questions.

Electronic supplementary material: Supplementary material is available for this article at 10.12942/lrr-2008-2.

Figure 1

The spectrum of cosmic rays [96]

Figure 2

First versions of Wilson’s cloud chamber, around 1895 [224]

Figure 3

Rockoon with Deacon rocket [47]

Figure 4

Charmed baryon and neutrino-proton collision in bubble chamber [32]

Figure 5

Draft of the cyclotron in the patent specification from 1932 [135]

Figure 6

Picture of the moon taken using x-rays: The light side on the right is a reflection of the sun’s x-rays; the overall x-ray background signal is also detectable[188].

Figure 7

Centaurus A: Radio emission; Radio and Infrared; Radio, Infrared, X-ray and Visible Light; Visible Light [160, 5, 6, 7]

Figure 8

Black hole with accretion disc and jets (quasar) [219]

Figure 9

mov-Movie (5.69 MB) Still from a movie showing The Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way [76] (For video see appendix)

Figure 10

False color image of 3C58; close-up of pulsar at center [201]

Figure 11

Along the charged track light is emitted isotropically (circles). Particles moving faster than light are emitting Cherenkov radiation (a). Particles below this threshold do not support coherent emission (b). [22]

Figure 12

ASPERA Schedule for infrastructure and communication network up to 2009 [11]