Amaterasu particles detected falling to Earth, researchers confused about where they came from

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.TV – Astronomers have discovered rare, extremely high-energy particles falling to Earth. This also sparked confusion because the particles came from an empty area in space.

The particle known as Amaterasu is one of the most powerful high-energy cosmic rays ever detected.

Its existence caused confusion because Amaterasu emerged from local voidan empty region of space that borders the Milky Way galaxy.

These particles have an energy of more than 240 exa-electron volts (EeV), millions of times greater than particles produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful accelerator ever built by humans.

This is equivalent to the energy of a golf ball traveling at 95 miles per hour.

The Amaterasu particle is the second most powerful particle after the Oh-My-God particle, which is another very high-energy cosmic ray with an energy of 320 EeV, detected in 1991.

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Prof John Matthews from the University of Utah, United States, and one of the authors of the paper in the journal Science revealed that events such as supernovae do not have enough energy to produce these kinds of particles.

“You need a very large amount of energy, a very high magnetic field, to confine that particle as it accelerates.” explained, quoted from The Guardian.

Apart from Matthews, Toshihiro Fujii, a professor at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, was also confused by the high energy of these particles.

“When I first discovered these very high-energy cosmic rays, I thought there must be a mistake, because these rays showed energy levels that were unprecedented in the last three decades,” he said.

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Potential candidates for this energy level are very massive black holes at the centers of other galaxies.

Around these black holes, matter is broken down into subatomic structures, and particles such as protons, electrons and atomic nuclei are released throughout the universe at speeds approaching the speed of light.

The researchers speculate that this phenomenon may be caused by a much larger than expected magnetic deflection, the presence of an unidentified source in local voidor because of an incomplete understanding of the physics of high-energy particles.

“It appears that these events originate from completely different locations in the sky. There is no one mysterious source,” said Professor John Belz of the University of Utah, who is also an author of the paper.

“There may be abnormalities in the structure of space, possible collisions of cosmic strings. I only put forward these extraordinary ideas because there is no accepted conventional explanation.” he added.

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