GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope

GLAST, a detector for cosmic gamma rays in the range from 20 MeV to 300 GeV, will be launched in space in 2005. Breakthroughs are expected in particular in the study of particle acceleration mechanisms in space and of gamma ray bursts, and maybe on the search for cold dark matter; but of course the most exciting discoveries could come from the unexpected.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Invited talk at the hird International Workshop "New Worlds in Astroparticle Physics", September 2000, University of the Algarve. Faro, Portugal. To be published in the Proceeding

Fundamental Physics With Cosmic High-Energy Gamma Rays

High-energy photons (above the MeV) are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics under extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the high-energy gamma-ray sky has impressively progressed thanks to the advent of new detectors for cosmic gamma rays, at ground (H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS, HAWC) and in space (AGILE, Fermi). This presentation reviews the present status of the studies of fundamental physics problems with high-energy gamma rays, and discusses the expected experimental developments.Comment: Invited Talk at the 6th International Symposium on High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy (Gamma2016), Heidelberg, July 201

Nationalism and internationalism in science: the case of the discovery of cosmic rays

The discovery of cosmic rays, a milestone in science, comprised scientists in Europe and the US and took place during a period characterised by nationalism and lack of communication. Many scientists that took part in this research a century ago were intrigued by the penetrating radiation and tried to understand the origin of it. Several important contributions to the discovery of the origin of cosmic rays have been forgotten and in particular that of Domenico Pacini, who in June 1911 demonstrated by studying the decrease of radioactivity with an electroscope immersed in water that cosmic rays could not come from the crust of the Earth. Several historical, political and personal facts might have contributed to the substantial disappearance of Pacini from the history of science.Comment: To be published in European Physical Journal H - Version revised after interaction with the editor and the referee

Very-High Energy Gamma Astrophysics

High-energy photons are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics under extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the most violent phenomena in the Universe has impressively progressed thanks to the advent of new detectors for high-energy gamma-rays. Observation of gamma-rays gives an exciting view of the high-energy universe thanks to satellite-based telescopes (AGILE, GLAST) and to ground-based detectors like the Cherenkov telescopes (H.E.S.S. and MAGIC in particular), which recently discovered more than 60 new very-high-energy sources. The progress achieved with the last generation of Cherenkov telescopes is comparable to the one drawn by EGRET with respect to the previous gamma-ray satellite detectors. This article reviews the present status of high-energy gamma astrophysics, with emphasis on the recent results and on the experimental developments.Comment: 60 pages, 52 figures, (on line abstract replacement

The e-ASTROGAM space mission: a major step forward for supernova physics

e-ASTROGAM is a gamma-ray observatory operating in a broad energy range, 0.15 MeV - 3 GeV, recently proposed as the M5 Medium-size mission of the European Space Agency. It has the potential to revolutionize the astronomy of medium-energy gamma-rays by increasing the number of known sources in this domain by more than an order of magnitude and providing gamma-ray polarization information for many of these sources. In these proceedings, we discuss the expected capacity of the mission to study the physics of supernovae, both thermonuclear and core-collapse, as well as the origin of cosmic rays in supernova shocks.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the IAU Symposium 331 "SN 1987A, 30 years later", eds. Alexandre Marcowith, Gloria Dubner, Alak Ray, Andre\"i Bykov and Matthieu Renau