(31.7.2018) Far, far away, something – somewhere – is creating particles with crazy amounts of energy. Whatever they are or wherever they’re from, these particles can be anything between 1018 eV and 1020 eV. Given that the top particle energy at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is about 1013 eV, some of these particles are a million times more energetic than anything we can fashion at the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet. Quite simply, they’re the most energetic particles ever seen in nature.

Known as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), these particles were discovered in 1962.