Signals of ‘‘new physics’’ in high-energy cosmic-ray interactions

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Abstract
In some composite models of quarks and leptons, leptons are expected to develop strong interactions at high energies. This hypothesis can be tested by studying the absorption of high-energy particles emitted by point sources in the sky on the cosmic microwave background. Data on Cygnus X-3 exhibit an anomaly in the absorption. A plausible interpretation of the anomaly is that some of the interactions are caused by neutrinos. We infer that the cross section of neutrino-nucleon interactions is approximately 6 mb at energies of a few PeV, significantly exceeding the prediction of the standard model.