MOSCOW, Nov 24 International collaboration of scientists and researchers of the Telescope project Array has detected the second most powerful cosmic ray ever observed, the nature of which cannot yet be determined, the University of Utah says.
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"Tracing the trajectory of the new particle (which makes up the ray. — Ed.) to source, something cannot be identified with a high enough energy level to produce it. That's the mystery — what the hell is going on? — said John Matthews, a representative of the Telescope Array at the University of Utah.
According to the university, in 1991, during an experiment called “Eye of the Fly,” researchers from Utah, using a telescopic array covering an area of 700 square kilometers, discovered the most powerful observations of cosmic rays. The particles they were made of were called Oh-My-God. According to astrophysicists, nothing in the Galaxy could produce such a flow, and the energy of the particle turned out to be greater than what was theoretically possible for cosmic rays.
But in May 2021, the Telescope Array team discovered the second strongest cosmic ray flow. And this November, researchers published an article saying that particles, called “Amaterasu” in honor of the Japanese sun goddess, may follow the laws of elementary particles unknown to science.
“These may be defects in the structure of space-time, colliding cosmic strings. I'm just spitting out the crazy ideas that people come up with because there's just no generally accepted explanation,» said University of Utah professor John Belz.
The international Telescope Array project brings together researchers from the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Belgium. The observatory is located in Utah at an altitude of 1370 meters above sea level.