The puzzling MILAGRO hot spots

We discuss the reported detection by the MILAGRO experiment of localised hot spots in the cosmic ray arrival distribution and the difficulty of interpreting these observations. A model based on secondary neutron production in the heliotail is shown to fail. An alternative model based on loss-cone leakage through a magnetic trap from a local source region is proposed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.