Early developments: Particle physics aspects of cosmic rays

Cosmic rays is the birthplace of elementary particle physics. The 1936 Nobel prize was shared between Victor Hess and Carl Anderson. Anderson discovered the positron in a cloud chamber. The positron was predicted by Dirac several years earlier. In subsequent cloud chamber investigations Anderson and Neddermeyer saw the muon, which for some time was considered to be a candidate for the Yukawa particle responsible for nuclear binding. Measurements with nuclear emulsions by Lattes, Powell, Occhialini and Muirhead clarified the situation by the discovery of the charged pions in cosmic rays. The cloud chamber continued to be a powerful instrument in cosmic ray studies. Rochester and Butler found V’s, which turned out to be shortlived neutral kaons decaying into a pair of charged pions. Also Λ ’s, Σ ’s, and Ξ ’s were found in cosmic rays. But after that accelerators and storage rings took over. The unexpected renaissance of cosmic rays started with the search for solar neutrinos and the observation of the supernova 1987A. Cosmic ray neutrino results were best explained by the assumption of neutrino oscillations opening a view beyond the standard model of elementary particles. After 100 years of cosmic ray research we are again at the beginning of a new era, and cosmic rays may contribute to solve the many open questions, like dark matter and dark energy, by providing energies well beyond those of accelerators.