MOSCOW, November 24 An international collaboration of scientists and researchers of the Telescope Array project has discovered the second most powerful cosmic ray ever observed, the nature of which cannot yet be determined, says the report. message from representatives of the University of Utah.
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“Tracing the trajectory of a new particle (of which the beam is composed. — Ed.) to the source, it is not possible to identify anything with a high enough energy level to produce it. That's the mystery — what the hell is going on? — shared John Matthews, 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 used a telescopic array covering an area of 700 square kilometers to detect the most powerful cosmic rays in the history of observation. The particles that made up these rays were called «Oh-My-God». According to astrophysicists, nothing in the galaxy could produce such a flux, and the energy of the particle turned out to be greater than was theoretically possible for cosmic rays. Such a particle, emphasizes the publication of the University «U», cannot exist in nature.
However, in May 2021, the Telescope Array team discovered the second strongest stream of cosmic rays. Later, in November 2023, researchers published an article indicating that the particles, called «Amaterasu» in honor of the Japanese sun goddess, may follow the laws of elementary particles unknown to science.
«It could be defects in the structure of space-time, colliding cosmic strings. I'm just spitting out the crazy ideas that come to people's minds, because there is simply no generally accepted explanation,» the University of Utah professor explained John Belz.
Previously, a group of scientists led by astronomer Anna Ho from Cornell University discovered the optical transient AT2022tsd — a flash one hundred billion times brighter than the Sun.