Extremely Powerful Cosmic Ray Hits The Earth And No One Knows Where It Came From

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The human species is nevertheless faced with puzzling issues and mysterious occurrences nearly every day about Earth and space.

And this week, a stunning finding was found by scientists examining the atmosphere of our planet.

It is extremely rare for something "earth-shattering" to occur in our galaxy without a cause or origin being identified by specialists.

Having said that, scientists were taken aback this week when a very strong cosmic ray struck the Earth's atmosphere for no obvious reason.

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Astrophysicists are completely taken aback by the event.

Even though the tiny particle carries more energy than 240 exa-electron volts, experts are discovering that it is nearly impossible to trace the cosmic ray to a clear source.

University of Utah physicist John Matthews informed the media this week: "The particles are so high energy, they shouldn't be affected by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields.”

"You should be able to point to where they come from in the sky."

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When a cosmic ray enters Earth's atmosphere, it collides with other particles, creating a shower of particles that fall to Earth as a result.

Observatories detect these patterns and associate them with collisions of cosmic rays.

According to Matthews, a member of the Telescope Array consortium that made the finding, the mind-blowing 'Oh-My-God' particle is the particle with the highest energy, surpassing even the massive number of exa-electron volts in the ray.

In 1991, this was discovered at an enormous 320 exa-electron volts.

The cosmic ray can be caused by a supernova. Getty Images / Yuichiro Chino

"But in the case of the Oh-My-God particle and this new particle, you trace its trajectory to its source and there's nothing high energy enough to have produced it," Matthews explained.

"That's the mystery of this – what the heck is going on?"

Cosmic rays, like many other phenomena in science and space, have long presented challenging puzzles.

Scientists still don't fully grasp how they can spread throughout the universe, despite the fact that they can detect them and have for more than a century.

This is due to the fact that cosmic rays are not formed of radiation like light is.

They are, instead, particles, mostly atomic nuclei but also sub-nuclear particles such as protons and electrons.

Though they indeed travel through the universe at nearly the speed of light, these are far more powerful than they ought to be.

Experts generally agree that these cosmic rays are created in energetic situations, like supernovas and star mergers.

Less energetic sources, such as stars, such as the Sun, can also create lower-energy cosmic rays.

The new particle has been called Amaterasu, after the Shinto goddess of the sun, by the scientific team behind the most recent finding of cosmic rays.