Origin of Energetic Space Particles (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 eVolts)

[On the Road]

"Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles that constantly bombard the Earth. Some come from the Sun, whereas higher-energy rays are accelerated around the remnants of supernovae.

But ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are at least a thousand times more energetic still, and extremely rare. Only one particle is expected to hit each square kilometre of Earth every century.

Physicists already know that these particles are almost certainly protons whose energies are measured in exaelectronvolts (10¹⁸ eV) - the amount of energy that an electron acquires when it is accelerated by a billion billion volts. Each proton has a kinetic energy similar to that of a flying golfball, and travels at just one part in 1022 slower than the speed of light.

Glennys Farrar, a particle physicist from New York University, has now shown that five of these particles all came to Earth from a pair of galactic clusters that are crashing together roughly 450 million light years away."

---snip

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050110/full/050110-18.html

All I can say is "holy shit!" Imagine the conditions that would generate these kinds of energies.

[ewagner]

1. Beyond imagination

The Universe is strange, indeed!!!!

[qwghlmian]

2. Interesting - but one thing this illustrates is the

amazing sparcity of matter in the universe. However massive these particles are, collision with anything reasonably solid will stop them - but they managed to come through millions of light years (if the article's point of origin is correct), traveling in a straight line, without hitting anything before they hit Earth.