Origin of Cosmic Rays Confirmed

cats-paw writes in with news of research that seems to confirm and support current theories of how cosmic rays are created. The prevailing thinking has been that cosmic rays are generated in the regions where supernovas' shock waves interact with the interstellar medium. The new research used the variability in X-ray emissions from a supernova remnant to estimate the strength of the magnetic fields present in that environment. The results lend support to the possibility of protons and nucleii being accelerated in supernova remnants to energies of 1 PeV (10^15 eV) and beyond. Here is the abstract from Nature.

[OT] Nitpicking summary

[noidentity]

[...] news of research that seems to confirm and support current theories of how cosmic rays are created. [...] The results lend support to the possibility of protons and nucleii being accelerated in supernova remnants to energies of 1 PeV (10^15 eV) and beyond. Here is the abstract from Nature.

So this research confirms... supports...well lends support to the possibility. Care to soften it further?

a good science post?

[Goldsmith]

Give credit to cats-paw for giving us the link to the abstract for the original paper and to the editors for putting this up rather than a link to some half-baked pseudo-science blog about it.

I think if I was not an experimentalist, I would want to study this area of physics (supernova observation). Going through the steps of a supernova exposes you to some of the most amazing physics we know of, and this research only adds to that.