Celestial Messengers: Cosmic Rays: The Story of a Scientific Adventure (Paperback, 2013)

Prehistory - The electron, the proton and X-rays.- Prehistory - Radioactivity.- Cosmic rays - The antefacts.- The discovery - Victor F. Hess and the balloon flights.- The confirmation - Robert Millikan and the "birth cry" of the borning atoms.- A turning point - Things are not as they look.- The earth magnetic field and the geomagnetic effects.- The positive electron.- The electromagnetic showers.- The muon.- The discovery of the pi-meson, nuclear emulsions and the first "strange" particles.- The extended showers.- Nuclear stars.- The neutrino: elusive and capricious particles able to come from very far away.- What are the primary cosmic rays?.- The origin of cosmic rays.- X- and gamma rays from space.