Ultra-High-Energy Particle Strikes Earth, Scientists Are Baffled

Now imagine a tiny particle, like a proton, zooming toward your hand at 99.99% of the speed of light.

Would you feel anything at all when it hits you?

The night of October 15, 1991.

A mysterious particle zoomed through space with the power of entire stars packed into tiny atoms.

Its energy was 40 million times the energy of the most powerful protons ever produced in our most advanced particle accelerators.

Like the Large Hadron Collider. Moreover, it was incredibly fast.

Its luminous tail even broke the particle speed limit.

According to some scientists, any particles going that fast should eventually slow down.

But this one didn't follow the rules. It just kept going just a tiny bit slower than the speed of light.

The scientist, John Linsley, was so shocked he exclaimed, oh my god, when he first saw this data.

So, that's how they named this thing, the oh my god particle.

Now imagine a normal particle, like a photon, traveling through space alongside this crazy racer.

Well, the OMG particle has energy that's 100 quintillion times greater than those of photons.

From our point of view on Earth, it would take the photon over 215,000 years to gain even the tiniest lead.

If we look at its energy, it would be like a baseball thrown at almost 60 miles per hour,

which would hurt if it hit your bare hand. Owl.

But surprisingly, if the OMG particle aimed at you, you wouldn't feel a thing.

It would simply pass through your hand. It could scatter some other particles around.

But overall, the impact would be unnoticeable.

And it's all because of how cosmic rays work.

You see, when you're in space, there are tons of invisible particles zooming around you at incredibly high speeds.

They're like tiny supercharged balls of energy.

These speedy particles are called cosmic rays.

Now we normally encounter the aftermath of their atmospheric dance at sea levels.

Most of the cosmic rays consist of lone protons, with just a dash of heavier particles.

The higher the energy, the rarer the ray.

They come from various places in the universe. They come in two flavors,

the lactic cosmic rays from outside our solar system,

and solar energetic particles emitted from the sun.

We're mostly protected from them, thanks to our Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere.

This protective shield deflects many charged particles, including cosmic rays,

away from our planet, or directs them toward the polar regions.

And guess what they cause there? That's right.

The famous, beautiful Aurora Borealis.

The northern lights that we often see in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the Earth

are caused by travelers from outer space.

But it's not like none of them ever reach our planet.

In fact, we're surrounded by cosmic rays everywhere.

Thousands of these rays are dancing around us every second.

And they don't just surround us, they're hitting us and passing through our bodies.

However, despite that, we don't feel a thing.

That's because, even though they're very energetic, they're still super small and low mass.

In fact, they're so tiny that they often pass through the spaces between atoms

and even inside the atoms themselves with minimal interaction.

Because of all of this, we had no idea that they existed until the 1910s.

A long time ago, scientists found out that the air high up in the sky

has some special stuff called ionization.

Ionization is when atoms or molecules gain or lose electric charges turning into ions.

In simpler terms, it's like giving a neutral thing, an atom or molecule,

a positive or negative charge.

These charged particles then can do some interesting things.

For example, they play a big role in electricity,

allowing things like lights and electronic devices to work.

In any case, scientists wanted to know where ionization comes from.

They first thought it came from radioactive things in the ground.

But then, in the early 1900s, a couple of scientists went up in balloons

and found out that this ionization increases the higher you go.

Turns out, something from space, not the sun, was making this ionization.

Scientists learned a lot about them over the years,

like where they come from and what they're made of.

And that's how the cosmic rays were discovered.

The mysterious OMG particle we've talked about was one of those cosmic rays.

This particle was detected by the fly's eye camera in Utah in 1991.

And to this day, it holds the record as the highest energy cosmic ray ever spotted.

Obviously, it sparked scientists' curiosity.

They wanted to find out where this supercharged particle came from

and how it got its incredible speed.

So, they decided to investigate it.

And the more they studied it, the more weird things they discovered.

For example, they found out that time itself stretches out for this particle

because of how insanely fast it is.

Special relativity, an idea created by Albert Einstein,

says that as you speed up, strange things happen.

And when you get close to that light speed zone,

time starts playing tricks.

For example, if the OMG particle started its journey from a spot

that's 1.5 billion light years away,

for the particle, it would feel like just around two days have passed

by the time it reaches us on Earth.

Since scientists discovered this amazing, oh my god, particle,

they've found hundreds of similar superenergenic events happening in space.

But it's extremely hard to find out why they move the way they do.

All the theories have their own problems and bumps.

One suspect is supernovus, massive star-booms

with magnetic fields and energy.

However, it looks like even their great energy isn't quite enough

to create an OMG particle.

Another top suspect was Centaurus A, a nearby active galaxy.

But the evidence for this one is tricky

because the Milky Way's magnetic field alters the paths of cosmic rays.

Of course, there are some crazy and exotic possibilities,

like topological defects from the big bang

or mysterious interactions within dark matter.

Scientists are exploring wild ideas as well.

Who knows?

Maybe it's really some crazy twist of physics.

High energy astrophysics is also super-helpful for studying

and understanding cosmic rays.

This is a field of study that explores highly energetic stuff in space

like extreme cosmic events.

Scientists are interested in understanding how cosmic rays are connected

to these wild events happening out there.

Unfortunately, even after almost 30 years of detective work,

the true origin of the OMG particles remains a mystery.

Luckily, recent studies might give us some hints for the answer.

In the large deserts of Utah, there's a thing called the telescope array.

It's searching for super-fast particles called ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Picture a massive grid of detectors spread across the desert,

keeping an eye on particles all day long.

And here's what it discovered recently.

There's a specific area in the Earth's major constellation.

At first, scientists didn't think much of it,

but then they analyzed the data thoroughly

and realized it was important.

This exceptional area is a warm spot

where these cosmic rays might be coming from,

and it has almost a hundred percent chance of being real.

It sounds like the universe has hidden energy source,

but what is this source and why does it exist?

Cosmic rays aren't just intriguing for astronomers.

They also have earthly applications.

In 2017, researchers used cosmic rays

to discover a hidden void in the great pyramid of Giza.

They used muon tomography,

a method that examines cosmic rays penetrating solid objects.

And this is how scientists unveiled the secrets of the ancient structure.

Scientists also used them to look inside volcanoes.

They used the same method as with pyramids.

When these rays pass through a volcano,

scientists can study how they move to create images of what's inside.

This helps researchers figure out where different materials are in the volcano

and keep an eye on any signs that it might become active.

So the more we learn about them,

the more we learn about the mysteries of our universe.

Scientists had to build better detectors to learn more.

Thanks to all the new technology,

they're learning things very rapidly.

So let's see what truth they'll discover in the future.