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Now imagine a tiny particle, like a proton, zooming toward your hand at 99.99% of the speed of light.
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Would you feel anything at all when it hits you?
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The night of October 15, 1991.
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A mysterious particle zoomed through space with the power of entire stars packed into tiny atoms.
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Its energy was 40 million times the energy of the most powerful protons ever produced in our most advanced particle accelerators.
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Like the Large Hadron Collider. Moreover, it was incredibly fast.
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Its luminous tail even broke the particle speed limit.
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According to some scientists, any particles going that fast should eventually slow down.
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But this one didn't follow the rules. It just kept going just a tiny bit slower than the speed of light.
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The scientist, John Linsley, was so shocked he exclaimed, oh my god, when he first saw this data.
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So, that's how they named this thing, the oh my god particle.
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Now imagine a normal particle, like a photon, traveling through space alongside this crazy racer.
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Well, the OMG particle has energy that's 100 quintillion times greater than those of photons.
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From our point of view on Earth, it would take the photon over 215,000 years to gain even the tiniest lead.
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If we look at its energy, it would be like a baseball thrown at almost 60 miles per hour,
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which would hurt if it hit your bare hand. Owl.
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But surprisingly, if the OMG particle aimed at you, you wouldn't feel a thing.
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It would simply pass through your hand. It could scatter some other particles around.
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But overall, the impact would be unnoticeable.
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And it's all because of how cosmic rays work.
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You see, when you're in space, there are tons of invisible particles zooming around you at incredibly high speeds.
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They're like tiny supercharged balls of energy.
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These speedy particles are called cosmic rays.
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Now we normally encounter the aftermath of their atmospheric dance at sea levels.
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Most of the cosmic rays consist of lone protons, with just a dash of heavier particles.
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The higher the energy, the rarer the ray.
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They come from various places in the universe. They come in two flavors,
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the lactic cosmic rays from outside our solar system,
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and solar energetic particles emitted from the sun.
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We're mostly protected from them, thanks to our Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere.
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This protective shield deflects many charged particles, including cosmic rays,
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away from our planet, or directs them toward the polar regions.
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And guess what they cause there? That's right.
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The famous, beautiful Aurora Borealis.
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The northern lights that we often see in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the Earth
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are caused by travelers from outer space.
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But it's not like none of them ever reach our planet.
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In fact, we're surrounded by cosmic rays everywhere.
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Thousands of these rays are dancing around us every second.
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And they don't just surround us, they're hitting us and passing through our bodies.
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However, despite that, we don't feel a thing.
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That's because, even though they're very energetic, they're still super small and low mass.
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In fact, they're so tiny that they often pass through the spaces between atoms
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and even inside the atoms themselves with minimal interaction.
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Because of all of this, we had no idea that they existed until the 1910s.
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A long time ago, scientists found out that the air high up in the sky
3:39
has some special stuff called ionization.
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Ionization is when atoms or molecules gain or lose electric charges turning into ions.
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In simpler terms, it's like giving a neutral thing, an atom or molecule,
3:54
a positive or negative charge.
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These charged particles then can do some interesting things.
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For example, they play a big role in electricity,
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allowing things like lights and electronic devices to work.
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In any case, scientists wanted to know where ionization comes from.
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They first thought it came from radioactive things in the ground.
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But then, in the early 1900s, a couple of scientists went up in balloons
4:20
and found out that this ionization increases the higher you go.
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Turns out, something from space, not the sun, was making this ionization.
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Scientists learned a lot about them over the years,
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like where they come from and what they're made of.
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And that's how the cosmic rays were discovered.
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The mysterious OMG particle we've talked about was one of those cosmic rays.
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This particle was detected by the fly's eye camera in Utah in 1991.
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And to this day, it holds the record as the highest energy cosmic ray ever spotted.
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Obviously, it sparked scientists' curiosity.
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They wanted to find out where this supercharged particle came from
5:01
and how it got its incredible speed.
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So, they decided to investigate it.
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And the more they studied it, the more weird things they discovered.
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For example, they found out that time itself stretches out for this particle
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because of how insanely fast it is.
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Special relativity, an idea created by Albert Einstein,
5:21
says that as you speed up, strange things happen.
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And when you get close to that light speed zone,
5:28
time starts playing tricks.
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For example, if the OMG particle started its journey from a spot
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that's 1.5 billion light years away,
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for the particle, it would feel like just around two days have passed
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by the time it reaches us on Earth.
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Since scientists discovered this amazing, oh my god, particle,
5:47
they've found hundreds of similar superenergenic events happening in space.
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But it's extremely hard to find out why they move the way they do.
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All the theories have their own problems and bumps.
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One suspect is supernovus, massive star-booms
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with magnetic fields and energy.
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However, it looks like even their great energy isn't quite enough
6:10
to create an OMG particle.
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Another top suspect was Centaurus A, a nearby active galaxy.
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But the evidence for this one is tricky
6:19
because the Milky Way's magnetic field alters the paths of cosmic rays.
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Of course, there are some crazy and exotic possibilities,
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like topological defects from the big bang
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or mysterious interactions within dark matter.
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Scientists are exploring wild ideas as well.
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Maybe it's really some crazy twist of physics.
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High energy astrophysics is also super-helpful for studying
6:45
and understanding cosmic rays.
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This is a field of study that explores highly energetic stuff in space
6:52
like extreme cosmic events.
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Scientists are interested in understanding how cosmic rays are connected
6:58
to these wild events happening out there.
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Unfortunately, even after almost 30 years of detective work,
7:05
the true origin of the OMG particles remains a mystery.
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Luckily, recent studies might give us some hints for the answer.
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In the large deserts of Utah, there's a thing called the telescope array.
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It's searching for super-fast particles called ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
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Picture a massive grid of detectors spread across the desert,
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keeping an eye on particles all day long.
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And here's what it discovered recently.
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There's a specific area in the Earth's major constellation.
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At first, scientists didn't think much of it,
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but then they analyzed the data thoroughly
7:42
and realized it was important.
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This exceptional area is a warm spot
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where these cosmic rays might be coming from,
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and it has almost a hundred percent chance of being real.
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It sounds like the universe has hidden energy source,
7:57
but what is this source and why does it exist?
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Cosmic rays aren't just intriguing for astronomers.
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They also have earthly applications.
8:07
In 2017, researchers used cosmic rays
8:10
to discover a hidden void in the great pyramid of Giza.
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They used muon tomography,
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a method that examines cosmic rays penetrating solid objects.
8:20
And this is how scientists unveiled the secrets of the ancient structure.
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Scientists also used them to look inside volcanoes.
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They used the same method as with pyramids.
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When these rays pass through a volcano,
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scientists can study how they move to create images of what's inside.
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This helps researchers figure out where different materials are in the volcano
8:41
and keep an eye on any signs that it might become active.
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So the more we learn about them,
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the more we learn about the mysteries of our universe.
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Scientists had to build better detectors to learn more.
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Thanks to all the new technology,
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they're learning things very rapidly.
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So let's see what truth they'll discover in the future.