Cosmic-Ray Record in Solar System Matter

Abstract

The energetic nuclei in cosmic rays interact with meteoroids, the moon, planets, and other solar system matter. The nuclides and heavy nuclei tracks produced by the cosmic-ray particles in these targets contain a wealth of information about the history of the objects and temporal and spatial variations in the particle fluxes. Most lunar samples and meny meteorites have complex histories of cosmicray exposure from erosion, gardening, fragmentation, orbital changes, and other processes. There appear to be variations in the past fluxes of solar particles, and possibly also galactic cosmic rays, on time scales of 10⁴ to 10⁷ years.