VERITAS Telescopes tells about the Origin of Cosmic Rays

Assam News · November 3, 2009

New evidence from the VERITAS telescope array shows that cosmic rays, the subatomic particles (mostly protons) that zip through space at nearly the speed of light, likely are powered by exploding stars and stellar “winds.” These findings were published in the November 1 online issue of the journal Nature, and are being featured today in a press conference at the Fermi Science Symposium in Washington, DC.

Active Galaxy M82

The rarest cosmic rays carry over 100 billion times as much energy as generated by any particle accelerator on Earth. (“Cosmic ray” is a historical misnomer, since they are individual particles, not a ray or beam.) Astronomers have devised ingenious methods for detecting cosmic rays that hit Earth’s atmosphere. However, detecting cosmic rays from a distance requires much more effort.

VERITAS has found new evidence for cosmic rays in the “Cigar Galaxy,” also known as Messier 82 (M82), which is located 12 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major.

“This discovery has been predicted for almost 20 years, but until now no instrument was sensitive enough to see it,” said Wystan Benbow, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Benbow coordinated this project for the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) collaboration.

The VERITAS observations strongly support the long-held theory that supernovae and stellar winds from massive stars are the dominant accelerators of cosmic-ray particles. Galaxies with high levels of star formation like M82, also known as “starburst” galaxies, have large numbers of supernovae and massive stars. If the theory holds, then starburst galaxies should contain more cosmic rays than normal galaxies. The VERITAS discovery confirms that expectation, indicating that the cosmic-ray density in M82 is approximately 500 times the average density in our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

“This discovery provides fundamental insight into the origin of cosmic rays,” said Rene Ong, a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the spokesperson for the VERITAS collaboration.

VERITAS could not detect M82’s cosmic rays directly because they are trapped within the Cigar Galaxy. Instead, VERITAS looked for clues to the presence of cosmic rays: gamma rays. Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, far more powerful than ultraviolet light or even X-rays. When cosmic rays interact with interstellar gas and radiation within M82, they produce gamma rays, which can then escape their home galaxy and reach Earthbound detectors. It took two years of dedicated data collection to tease out the faint signal coming from M82.

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

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Category: Science | Tags: Astronomy, Cosmic Rays, Science, Space, Telescopes, VERITAS