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Origin of Cosmic Rays Revealed
neutron_p writes "An international team of astronomers has produced the first ever image of an astronomical object using high energy gamma rays, helping to solve a 100 year old mystery - an origin of cosmic rays. The astronomers studied the remnant of a supernova that exploded some 1,000 years ago, leaving behind an expanding shell of debris which, seen from the Earth, is twice the diameter of the Moon. Cosmic rays are extremely energetic particles that continually bombard the Earth, thousands of them passing through our bodies every day."
What is more interresting than a source of cosmic rays is the source of the gamma bursts. Some background is here.
Don't worry - cosmic rays are a great source of super-powers such as stretchiness, spontaneous combustion, invisibility, and...and...Things.
I'm surprised noone else caught the Fantastic Four reference in the "from the...department" line of the summary - it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the phrase "cosmic rays"!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
It's funny that "origin" in this case is "where they're coming from" when the real question is "why and how are cosmic rays created?"
There's a lot of energy being beamed about, and well, you'd think that it would stop eventually, but it keeps on coming.
Hate to be picky, but muons are actually considered pretty long lived. They have a half life of over 2 microseconds. That sounds short, but it's a lot longer than a free neutron (for example), and it means they're really useful for probing materials.
Are you trolling? Free neutrons have a half-life of about 10 minutes