An extremely high-energy particle is detected coming from an apparently empty region of space::Amaterasu particle, one of highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected, is coming from an apparently empty region of space

  • Dogyote@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    It’s just a ship dropping out of warp a safe distance from our system. While inconvenient, it’s considered best practice to drop out well away from the system’s center to shed the particles you’ve accumulated in your warp bubble during transit. They are extremely energetic and can cause immense damage if released irresponsibly close to an inhabited planet. This is especially true when visiting a primitive world that hasn’t set up any sensible warp safety systems.

    • berg@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I thought this was common knowledge by now? It’s like they don’t even care to do some digging before posting stuff anymore…

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Astronomers have detected a rare and extremely high-energy particle falling to Earth that is causing bafflement because it is coming from an apparently empty region of space.

    “You trace its trajectory to its source and there’s nothing high energy enough to have produced it,” said Prof John Matthews, of the University of Utah and a co-author of the paper in the journal Science that describes the discovery.

    Toshihiro Fujii, an associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, said: “When I first discovered this ultra-high-energy cosmic ray, I thought there must have been a mistake, as it showed an energy level unprecedented in the last three decades.”

    Cosmic rays, echoes of such violent celestial events, rain down on to Earth nearly constantly and can be detected by instruments, such as the Telescope Array observatory in Utah, which found the Amaterasu particle.

    But particles with Oh-My-God or Amaterasu-level energy would be expected to blast through intergalactic space relatively unbent by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields, meaning it should be possible to trace their origin.

    Once completed, 500 new scintillator detectors will expand the Telescope Array across 2,900 km2 (1,100 mi2 ), an area nearly the size of Rhode Island and this larger footprint is expected to capture more of these extreme events.


    The original article contains 677 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    equivalent to the energy of a golf ball travelling at 95mph

    So I am curious about this comparison. If this particle had hit you square on the top of your head, rather than the array they built to detect it… would you even know it? Would it kill you? Make you uncomfortable? What?

      • BluesF@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        And his face half stopped aging! Wild story, always love being reminded of this guy.

      • philpo@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        This is such a bad and sensationaliat article - completely ignoring that we use protontherapy for quite a while now.

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’d obliterate what ever particle(s) were unfortunate enough to be in the way. They’d turn in to a shower of other particles, like sticking your head in a particle acelerator, but all at once.

      It’s highly unlikely all of the energy would go in to you, so it’d amount to a narrow beam of ionizing radiation. Potentially deadly, potentially not. A guy did get his head in a particle acelerator beam when he thought it was turned off. Saw a really bright flash and all. It kinda’ messed up that narrow channel of flesh and he has some cignitive issues as a result.

  • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When they say “local void”, do they mean like a cone extending in that direction with nothing behind it or a space with nothing inside it but stuff behind it?

    If it’s the former, what is going on with that?

    If it’s the latter, couldn’t this have traveled from one of the things behind it?

    • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      If it’s the former, what is going on with that?

      If you look at the universe structure, it’s not entirely implausible to have some straight lines that don’t intersect any bodies of mass, depending on how far back in time you’re looking.

      https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=universe+structure&ia=web

      If it’s the latter, couldn’t this have traveled from one of the things behind it?

      Only if that thing is/was ahead of the lightspeed/space expansion event horizon.

    • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      This is what our area probably looks like on really grand scale (every dot is a galaxy). The local void is one of the dark areas next to us.