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The Oh-My-God particle still defies explanation
Boing Boing • • science
Key Points:
- On October 15, 1991, the University of Utah's Fly's Eye detector recorded the "Oh-My-God particle," a subatomic particle with an energy of about 3.2×10²⁰ electronvolts, equivalent to the kinetic energy of a baseball moving at 100 km/h.
- This particle's energy was approximately 40 million times greater than that of the most powerful protons produced by Earth-based particle accelerators.
- Since then, at least fifteen similar ultra-high-energy cosmic ray events have been detected, confirming their existence but highlighting their rarity, with the Pierre Auger Observatory observing roughly one such event every four weeks.
- The origin of these particles remains unknown, as they do not align with the plane of the Milky Way, and galactic magnetic fields cannot accelerate particles to such energies, suggesting an extragalactic source.
- Proposed sources include magnetars, which are young neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, and supermassive black holes at the centers of active galaxies.
