Celestial Messengers: Cosmic Rays: The Story of a Scientific Adventure [Paperback]

The book describes from a historical point of view how cosmic rays were discovered. The book describes the research in cosmic rays. The main focus is on how the knowledge was gained, describing the main experiments and the conclusions drawn. Biographical sketches of main researchers are provided. Cosmic rays have an official date of discovery which is linked to the famous balloon flights of the Austrian physicist Hess in 1912. The year 2012 can therefore be considered the centenary of the discovery.This book describes from a historical point of view research in cosmic rays and how they were discovered. It covers how the knowledge was gained, detailing the main experiments and the conclusions drawn.Prehistory - The electron, the proton and X-rays.- Prehistory - Radioactivity.- Cosmic rays - The antefacts.- The discovery - Victor F. Hess and the balloon flights.- The confirmation - Robert Millikan and the? birth cry of the borning atoms.- A turning point - Things are not as they look.- The earth magnetic field and the geomagnetic effects.- The positive electron.- The electromagnetic showers.- The muon.- The discovery of the ?-meson, nuclear emulsions and the first strange particles.- The extended showers.- Nuclear stars.- The neutrino: elusive and capricious particles able to come from very far away.- What are the primary cosmic rays?.- The origin of cosmic rays.- X- and gamma rays from space.

Mario Bertolotti received his degree in Physics from the University of Roma, Italy and became full professor of physics at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Roma La Sapienza from 1970 until 2008, when he retired.
After a short period at CERN, Ginevra he returned to Italy and started research on lasers, light-matter interactions, nonlinear optics, etc. He is the author of about 500 papers on peer reviewed physics journals. He is fellow of IOP, American Optical Society, Italian Physical Society, Italian Optical and Photonic Society of which he halC¶