Partly motivated by the discovery of neutrino oscillation, the field has undergone rapid development, both theoretically and experimentally, since the early 2000s.
The field can be said to have begun in 1910, when a German physicist named Theodor Wulf measured the ionization in the air, an indicator of gamma radiation, at the bottom and top of the Eiffel Tower.
His measurements however, revealed that although the ionization levels initially decreased with altitude, they began to sharply rise at some point.
The journal Astroparticle Physics accepts papers that are focused on new developments in the following areas:[5] One main task for the future of the field is simply to thoroughly define itself beyond working definitions and clearly differentiate itself from astrophysics and other related topics.
Since the early nineties some candidates have been found to partially explain some of the missing dark matter, but they are nowhere near sufficient to offer a full explanation.
Experimental particle physicists are limited by the technology of their terrestrial accelerators, which are only able to produce a small fraction of the energies found in nature.
These facilities are located deep underground, to shield very sensitive experiments from cosmic rays that would otherwise preclude the observation of very rare phenomena.