Abstract
The field of astroparticle physics, or particle astrophysics, is relatively new. It is therefore not easy to describe the history of this branch of research. The selection of milestones in this book is necessarily subject to a certain arbitrariness and personal taste.
Look into the past as guidance for the future.
Robert Jacob Goodkin
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Notes
- 1.
Kamiokande—Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiment.
- 2.
IMB—Irvine–Michigan–Brookhaven collaboration.
- 3.
OSO—Orbiting Solar Observatory; SAS—Small Astronomy Satellite.
- 4.
It has become common practice in the scientific literature that the number \(10^9\) is called a billion, while in other countries the billion is \(10^{12}\). Throughout this book the notation that a billion is equal to a thousand millions is used.
- 5.
The excrements of pigeons presented a severe problem during an attempt to reduce the noise of their horn antenna. When, after a thorough cleaning of the whole system, a residual noise still remained, Arno Penzias was reported to have said: “Either we have seen the birth of the universe, or we have seen another pile of pigeon shit.”
- 6.
COBE—COsmic ray Background Explorer.
- 7.
DONUT—Direct Observation of NU Tau (\(\nu _{\tau }\)).
- 8.
GALLEX—German–Italian GALLium EXperiment.
- 9.
SAGE—Soviet–American Gallium Experiment.
- 10.
SNO—Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
- 11.
LEP—Large Electron–Positron collider at CERN in Geneva.
- 12.
DESY—Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron in Hamburg.
- 13.
CERN—Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.
- 14.
ROSAT—ROentgen SATellite of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Munich.
- 15.
International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory.
- 16.
MACHO—search for MAssive Compact Halo Objects.
- 17.
EROS—Expérience pour la Recherche d’Objets Sombres.
- 18.
WIMP—Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.
- 19.
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
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Grupen, C. (2020). Historical Introduction. In: Astroparticle Physics. Undergraduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27339-2_1
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