Cosmic Rays Hint at Hotspot

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Cosmic Rays Hint at Hotspot

A cluster of detections in the Northern Hemisphere sky might point to a source for the most energetic particles bombarding Earth's atmosphere.

Astronomers have found hints of a cosmic ray hotspot in the Northern Hemisphere sky. Cosmic rays are charged particles (mostly protons) that rain down on Earth from space. They reach energies far above those of manmade particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider, which bashes protons together at trillions (10¹²) of electron volts.

Cosmic rays carrying energies less than 10¹⁵ electron volts come from inside the Milky Way, likely from its regions of rampant star birth and death. Those with even higher energies (up to about 60 exaelectron volts, or EeV — that’s 10¹⁸) come from outside our galaxy. Particles above 60 EeV generally don’t reach Earth, likely because they interact with other stuff during their journey across the vastness of intergalactic space and never make it to us.

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