From Ultra Rays to Astroparticles

Book excerpt: The scope of the book is to give an overview of the history of astroparticle physics, starting with the discovery of cosmic rays (Victor Hess, 1912) and its background (X-ray, radioactivity). The book focusses on the ways in which physics changes in the course of this history. The following changes run parallel, overlap, and/or interact: - Discovery of effects like X-rays, radioactivity, cosmic rays, new particles but also progress through non-discoveries (monopoles) etc. - The change of the description of nature in physics, as consequence of new theoretical questions at the beginning of the 20th century, giving rise to quantum physics, relativity, etc. - The change of experimental methods, cooperations, disciplinary divisions. With regard to the latter change, a main topic of the book is to make the specific multi-diciplinary features of astroparticle physics clear.