Cosmic ray spallation

Cosmic ray spallation, also known as the x-process, is a set of naturally occurring nuclear reactions causing nucleosynthesis; it refers to the formation of chemical elements from the impact of cosmic rays on an object. Cosmic rays are highly energetic charged particles from beyond Earth, ranging from protons, alpha particles, and nuclei of many heavier elements. About 1% of cosmic rays also consist of free electrons. Cosmic rays cause spallation when a ray particle (e.g. a proton) impacts with matter, including other cosmic rays. The result of the collision is the expulsion of particles (protons, neutrons, and alpha particles) from the object hit. This process goes on not only in deep space, but in Earth's upper atmosphere and crustal surface (typically the upper ten meters) due to the ongoing impact of cosmic rays. Cosmic ray spallation is thought to be responsible for the abundance in the universe of some light elements—lithium, beryllium, and boron—as well as the isotope helium-3. This process (cosmogenic nucleosynthesis) was discovered somewhat by accident during the 1970s: models of Big Bang nucleosynthesis suggested that the amount of deuterium was too large to be consistent with the expansion rate of the universe and there was therefore great interest in processes that could generate deuterium after the Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Cosmic ray spallation was investigated as a possible process to generate deuterium. As it turned out, spallation could not generate much deuterium, but the new studies of spallation showed that this process could generate lithium, beryllium and boron; indeed, isotopes of these elements are over-represented in cosmic ray nuclei, as compared with solar atmospheres (whereas hydrogen and helium are present in about primordial ratios in cosmic rays). An example of cosmic ray spallation is a neutron hitting a nitrogen-14 nucleus in the earth's atmosphere, yielding a proton, an alpha particle, and a beryllium-10 nucleus, which eventually decays to boron-10.