- Reaction score
- 1,703
Discovery leads to more questions than answers.
On 27 May, 2021, Professor Toshihiro Fujii of Osaka Municipal University was monitoring cosmic rays when he detected a sub-atomic particle that hit Earth with an energy of 244 exaelectron volts.
That’s about the energy a bowling ball would have if you dropped it, which might not sound like much until you take into account the ridiculously massive difference in scale between a bowling ball and a subatomic particle. If an actual bowling ball contained the proportionally same amount of energy, it would be powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth, if not obliterate the planet itself.
So, needless to say, it’s a pretty power-packed little particle, and when Fujii detected it, he did what all good scientists do and immediately suspected it might be some kind of mistake. After detecting the particle in the Telescope Array project in the deserts of Utah he spent the next two years gathering the necessary evidence to confirm his discovery was correct.
Fujii and colleagues also named it the “Amaterasu Particle” after the ancient Japanese goddess of the Sun and the universe. This was in part due to the mysteriously inexplicable origin of the cosmic ray. Particles packing this kind of energy are generally believed to have come from a major celestial cataclysm like a supernova, but the Amaterasu Particle seems to have originated from a patch of space known as the Local Void which, as you can probably guess from the name, has a whole lot of nothing in it.
soranews24.com
On 27 May, 2021, Professor Toshihiro Fujii of Osaka Municipal University was monitoring cosmic rays when he detected a sub-atomic particle that hit Earth with an energy of 244 exaelectron volts.
That’s about the energy a bowling ball would have if you dropped it, which might not sound like much until you take into account the ridiculously massive difference in scale between a bowling ball and a subatomic particle. If an actual bowling ball contained the proportionally same amount of energy, it would be powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth, if not obliterate the planet itself.
So, needless to say, it’s a pretty power-packed little particle, and when Fujii detected it, he did what all good scientists do and immediately suspected it might be some kind of mistake. After detecting the particle in the Telescope Array project in the deserts of Utah he spent the next two years gathering the necessary evidence to confirm his discovery was correct.
Fujii and colleagues also named it the “Amaterasu Particle” after the ancient Japanese goddess of the Sun and the universe. This was in part due to the mysteriously inexplicable origin of the cosmic ray. Particles packing this kind of energy are generally believed to have come from a major celestial cataclysm like a supernova, but the Amaterasu Particle seems to have originated from a patch of space known as the Local Void which, as you can probably guess from the name, has a whole lot of nothing in it.
Mysterious cosmic ray named after Japanese goddess Amaterasu confirmed second most powerful
Discovery leads to more questions than answers.
soranews24.com
