Amaterasu Particle: Mysterious Source of High Energy Cosmic Rays

Novina Putri Bestari, CNBC Indonesia

Tech

Thursday, 11/30/2023 08:25 WIB

Photo: Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in areas known as star-forming regions W3 and W5 in the Milky Way Galaxy. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Wisconsin via AP)

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A huge energy from outer space was detected raining down on Earth. The particle called Amaterasu is one of the highest energy cosmic rays ever detected.

However, this incident confused many researchers. The reason is that Amaterasu comes from the empty space of the Local Void which is directly adjacent to the Milky Way galaxy.

“Tracing its path back to its source and there’s no energy high enough to produce it. That’s the mystery, what’s really going on?” said one of the authors from the University of Utah, John Matthews, quoted from The GuardianThursday (30/11/2023).

Regarding the trajectory of the void, the researchers think it may indicate a much larger magnetic deflection, an unknown source in the Local Void, or an incomplete understanding of the physics of high-energy particles.

The Amaterasu particle itself has an energy of more than 240 exa-electron vold (Eev). The total is more than the strongest particles ever created at the Large Hadron Collider.

That energy, The Guardian notes, is the same as the energy of a golf ball traveling at 95 mph. Amaterasu is second only to the Oh-My-God particle with a power of up to 320 Eev.

Matthews even said that nothing could beat the energy of that particle. “You need a large amount of energy, a very high magnetic field to be able to confine the particle as it accelerates,” he said.

The high energy of these particles even made Osaka Metropolitan University professor in Japan, Toshihiro Fujii think there was an error. Because we have never found that much energy.

“When I first discovered very high-energy cosmic rays, I thought there must be an error. Because they showed energy levels that had not been seen before for three decades,” he said.

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