After years of incongruent research results, Japanese and American universities are pooling their money, secrets and ingenuity to track an astrophysical abnormality that's baffled scientists for almost a hundred years: cosmic rays. Scientists aren't after just any old cosmic rays, the streams of subatomic particles jettisoned by the sun or exploding stars. They're focusing on high-energy cosmic rays -- particles producing so much power they seem to defy nature and that astrophysicists say show no origin at all. If theories on the source of the rays are confirmed, scientists may uncover insights into the earliest moments of our universe. This spring, the University of Utah and the University of Tokyo, in partnership with 11 other U.S. and Japanese institutions, will begin construction of an $18 million cosmic-ray observatory in central Utah to detect, measure and trace cosmic rays with energy of 1020 electron volts or more, the minimum level for a ray to be categorized as high-energy. Researchers believe data from the Telescope Array observatory will help unravel the mystery of these ultra-high-energy rays, of which only 12 have been observed in the past decade.

"A cosmic ray should point back to where it's coming from. If it was from the sun or somewhere in our galaxy, we would see that," said professor Pierre Sokolsky. "But high-energy cosmic rays don't point back to anywhere. They come from all over the place."

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