In 1991, a subatomic particle traveling *just* under the speed of light — and I do mean "just" — slammed into Earth's atmosphere with the energy of a major league basebal pitch!
But... where did it come from? And how?
A thing I wrote:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-did-the-oh-my-god-particle-come-from/
Cool article, thanks for writing and sharing!
I’m assuming any particle being accelerated to that amount of energy needs to be affected by an accelerating field for longer periods and/or in fields of greater strength.
Are there observations that show ionized iron atoms could be accelerated to relativistic velocities?
@stepheneb @badastro The article has a link to "first-order Fermi acceleration." I think that page has the intended answer? Not sure if it applies to nuclei or ionised atoms that you asked about.
Adrian Cockcroft
Phil Plait
spanghero
Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm)
muddle