Amaterasu:

 

Amaterasu:

·       It is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected.

·       It has been named Amaterasu after the Japanese sun goddess.

·       It has an energy exceeding 240 exa-electron volts (EeV). That is millions of times more than particles produced in the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful accelerator ever built, and equivalent to the energy of a golf ball travelling at 95mph.

·       It comes only second to the Oh-My-God particle, another ultra-high-energy cosmic ray that came in at 320 EeV, detected in 1991.

·       Amaterasu appears to have emerged from the Local Void, an empty area of space bordering the Milky Way galaxy.

What are Cosmic Rays?

·       They are echoes of violent celestial events that have stripped matter of its subatomic structures and hurled it through the universe at nearly the speed of light.

·       Essentially, cosmic rays are charged particles with a wide range of energies consisting of positive protons, negative electrons, or entire atomic nuclei that travel through space and rain down onto Earth nearly constantly.

·       They hit Earth’s upper atmosphere and blast apart the nucleus of oxygen and nitrogen gas, generating many secondary particles.

·       These travel a short distance in the atmosphere and repeat the process, building a shower of billions of secondary particles that scatter to the surface.