Particle Acceleration: From Galaxies to Large Scale Structure

In this brief review we discuss current efforts to understand the origin of energetic particles, focussing here on the recent work on the physics of supernova explosions. Acceleration to the highest energy may come from jets and hot spots emanating from massive black holes. If the sky remains smooth in the arrival directions of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays to the highest energies, then we need new sources, and one extreme speculation would be to invoke Lorentz Invariance Violation, with proton decay, neutron survival, and no strong photomeson interaction to higher energy. For the Galactic cosmic rays explosions of red supergiant stars and Wolf Rayet stars may provide much of the cosmic rays. This is intimately connected with the physics of their explosion, and implies that the magneto-rotational mechanism is the main one chosen by Nature. This offers a consistent picture for the X-ray fans of Cas A, and gamma ray bursts. Each of these concepts leads to clear predictions. It will be quite an achievement to prove this or any other proposal -- none is without difficulties. We do have potentially a full theory to account for cosmic rays at all energies; crucial tests will be performed with the current new instruments