Are Galactic Gamma-Ray Bursters the Main Source of Hadronic Non-Solar Cosmic Rays at all Energies?

Abstract

We propose a new hypothesis for the origin of non-solar hadronic cosmic rays (CRs) at all energies: Highly relativistic, narrowly collimated jets from the birth or collapse of neutron stars (NSs) in our Galaxy accelerate ambient disk and halo matter to CR energies and disperse it in ``hot spots'' which they form when they stop in the Galactic halo. Such events - ``Galactic Gamma-Ray Bursters'' (GGRBs) - are proposed to cause cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in other galaxies when their beamed radiation happens to point in our direction. Our hypothesis naturally explains some observations which are difficult to understand with the currently popular ideas about CR origin - e.g. the small Galacto-centric gradient of the cosmic-ray density and the absence of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff. Our idea stands or falls with the existence of the ``hot spots'' (``GGRB remnants'') in the Galactic halo. We discuss their expected observational signatures and find that they could appear as EGRET unidentified high-latitude sources.