1997/05/02 by Arnon Dar, Ari Laor, Nir J. Shaviv · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.80.5813
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.80:5813-5816,1998 · To appear in "Very High Phenomena in the Universe", Proceedings of the XXII Rencontre de Moriond, Les Arcs, France, 1997, and in "Results and Perspectives in Particle Physics" Proceedings of the 1997 Rencontre de la Valee d'Aosta, Italy, 1997
arxiv created 1997/05/02 · openalex publication_date 1998/06/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
High energy cosmic ray jets from nearby mergers or accretion induced collapse of neutron stars that hit the atmosphere can produce lethal fluxes of atmospheric muons at ground level, underground and underwater, destroy the ozone layer, and radioactivate the environment. They could have caused some of the massive life extinctions on planet Earth in the past 570 Myr. Biological mutations due to such ionizing radiations could have caused the fast appearance of new species after these mass extinctions.