The chemistry that occurs in the interstellar medium in response to cosmic ray ionization is summarized, and a review of the ionization rates that have been derived from measurements of molecular abundances is presented. The successful detection of large abundances of H(3)(+) in diffuse clouds and the recognition that dissociative recombination of H(3)(+) is fast has led to an upward revision o...

Because of the roughly linear correlation between Be/H and Fe/H in low metallicity halo stars, it has been argued that a “primary” component in the nucleosynthesis of Be must be present in addition to the “secondary” component from standard Galactic cosmic ray nucleosynthesis. In this paper we critically re-evaluate the evidence for the primary versus secondary character of Li, Be, and B evolut...

Observational signatures of existence of antimatter objects in the Galaxy are discussed. We focus on point-like sources of gamma radiation, diffuse galactic gamma ray background and anti-nuclei in cosmic rays.

A recent discovery concerning the importance of hadron production in space radiation is that pions can contribute up to twenty percent of the dose from galactic cosmic ray interactions (S. Aghara, S. Blattnig, J. Norbury, R. Singleterry, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, Vol. 267, 2009, p. 1115). Although the contribution for dose equivalent will be smaller, the dose contribution could be import...

Diffuse emission from the Milky Way dominates the γ-ray sky. About 80% of the high-energy luminosity of the Milky Way comes from processes in the interstellar medium. The Galactic diffuse emission traces interactions of energetic particles, primarily protons and electrons, with the interstellar gas and radiation field, thus delivering information about cosmic-ray spectra and interstellar mass i...

We review the evidence for cosmic ray acceleration in the superbubble/hot phase of the interstellar medium, and discuss the implications for the composition of cosmic rays and the structure and evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM). We show that the bulk of the galactic supernovae, their expanding remnants, together with their metal-rich grain and gas ejecta, and their cosmic ray accelerat...

The Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) was launched in December 2001 and 2003 from McMurdo, Antarctica and was designed to observe elements ranging from 14 ≤ Z ≤ 40 over an extended energy range. Observations of radioactive isotopes produced during explosive nucleosynthesis such as Ni that decay only through electron capture provide important constraints on the delay between nucleosyn...

We report first results of first global galactic-scale CR-MHD simulations of cosmicray-driven dynamo. We investigate the dynamics of magnetized interstellar medium (ISM), which is dynamically coupled with the cosmic-ray (CR) gas. We assume that exploding stars deposit small-scale, randomly oriented, dipolar magnetic fields into the differentially rotating ISM, together with a portion of cosmic ...

The cosmological gamma-ray burst (GRB) model for the production of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays is described, and the current observational evidence which support it discussed. Several predictions of the model are presented, which would allow it to be tested by future high energy cosmic ray and gamma-ray experiments. If the predicted signatures of the GRB model are observed, they will not only ...

A new numerical model of particle propagation in the Galaxy has been developed, which allows the study of cosmic-ray and gamma-ray production and propagation in 2D or 3D, including a full reaction network. This is a further development of the code which has been used for studies of cosmic ray reacceleration, Galactic halo size, antiprotons and positrons in cosmic rays, the interpretation of dif...