Particle production in very-high-energy cosmic-ray emulsion chamber events: Usual and unusual events

We show that a simple scaling model of very forward particle production, consistent with accelerator and air shower data, can describe the overall features of the very-high-energy interactions recorded with emulsion chambers. The rapidity and transverse momentum distribution of the secondaries are quantitatively reproduced. This is somewhat surprising after numerous claims that the same data implied large scaling violations or new dynamics. Interestingly, we cannot describe some of the Centauro events, suggesting that these events are anomalous independently of their well-advertised unusual features such as the absence of neutral secondaries.