Acceleration of cosmic rays by supernova

[dougettinger]

The Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, PAMELA, has been measuring cosmic rays for the past three years. The origin of cosmic rays from supernova is now being disputed. Cosmic rays are actually fast-moving particles that carryan extraordinary amount of energy and continuously bombard Earth from every direction.

The current theory is that supernovae should accelerate both hydrogen and helium in the same way. But PAMELA has found diffeences between measurements of the hydrogen and helium particles that a single shock wave cannot explain. The two particles seem to accelerated by different mechanisms.

My question is very basic. Why does hydrogen and helium particles have to be accelerated by the same mechanism ? Could not a supernova have explosions at different times that eject the hydrogen envelop and then the helium envelop ? These two explosions would happen close together in cosmic time but could have different amounts of energy.

3/27/2011

[bystander]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 28#p145633

[dougettinger]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 28#p145633

Hello fellow retiree. Perhaps you have the same pathos as I.
Your excellent reference and chart address the topic very well but do not answer my question. Let me restate my idea.

The supernovae of massive blue stars are thought to release or expel outer envelops of material at different times prior to the final explosion. These first releases of baryons and energy would necessarily be the protons of hydrogen atoms and then the helium atoms of a subsequent release due to our knowledge of nucleosynthesis. If this is the case why then should cosmic rays that represent these energetic particles all have the same acceleration properties and come from the same power law ?

3/29/2011

[dougettinger]

I am inviting answers or ideas from anybody about a postulated analysis of data received from PAMELA regarding cosmic rays.

3/30/2011