The vicissitudes of "cannonballs": a response to criticisms by A.M. Hillas and a brief review of our claims

I. MOTIVATION The ‘cannonball’ (CB) model is based on the hypothesis that a good fraction of core-collapse SNe biaxially emit a few plasmoids of ordinary matter, initially expanding (in their rest system) at the speed of sound in a relativistic plasma. The CBs have a typical initial Lorentz factor of O(10 3 ) and a baryon number of O(10 50 ), roughly corresponding to half the mass of Mercury. We contend that this model provides a good, simple, few-parameter description of the properties of cosmic rays (CRs), long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), Xray flashes, the gamma background radiation, the natal kicks of neutron stars, the magnetic fields of galaxy clus