Most powerful cosmic rays ever discovered — and they could be born next door

Scientists have discovered rays with 40,000 times the energy of visible light, but they do not know their origin: they are produced by mysterious sources, but they must be very close to us.

These cosmic rays consist of electrons and their antimatter equivalentspositrons, and have been observed at energies up to 40 teraelectronvolts (TeV), that is, 40,000 times the energy of visible light. They were recorded by the High Energy Stereoscopic System observatory (HESS) in Namibia.

However, it is not known what is producing them, as the authors of , published on November 25th in Physical Review Letters.

Since rays lose energy throughout their journey through space, their detection at high energies means that are likely to come from sources relatively close to Earthexplains to .

“This is an important result, as we can conclude that the measured cosmic ray electrons most likely originate from very few sources in the vicinity of our own solar system, up to a maximum of a few 1000 light years away, a very small distance compared to the size of our Galaxy.”

The corresponding author says it Kathrin Egberts, head of experimental astro-particle physics at the University of Potsdam, Germany, in a statement published in .

According to Live Science, cosmic rays are high-energy particles produced by the Sun, stellar explosions called supernovae, rapidly rotating neutron stars called pulsars, and other unknown sources. When the rays reach Earth’s upper atmosphere, they split into particle rain that can be detected on the Earth’s surface.

“Os very low fluxes in TeV bigger limit the possibilities for space missions to compete with this measurement”, stated the corresponding author Matthew of Nauroisresearcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, in the same statement.

“So our measurement not only provides data in a crucial and previously unexplored energy range impacting our understanding of the local neighborhood, but also it is likely to continue to be a reference for years to come“, concludes the researcher.