FOM research program on the origin of high-energy cosmic rays

Where do cosmic particles originate that arrive on Earth with extremely high energies? What is the mechanism that accelerates these particles to energies well beyond those that can be reached by even the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth? These are the key questions of the research program entitled ‘The origin of cosmic rays’, which was approved by the Executive Board of the Dutch funding agency FOM in November 2007.

The research program will employ two complementary techniques to unravel the mysterious origin of cosmic rays:

It will be investigated whether potential sources of cosmic rays can be associated with known objects in the universe such as black holes at the centers of galaxies or – for instance – are the result of the annihilation of two dark matter particles.

The programme has started in 2008 and will be concluded in 2013. The total budget is 3.2 million euro's.

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