 |
| It's possible the particle came from the kind of exotic objects that lurk in vast nebula, like this one. |
Can anything made of matter reach lightspeed? The 'oh-my-god' particle came damn close: A subatomic particle that struck Utah in 1991, it stunned the physicists at the University of Utah's cosmic ray observatory - it was travelling so close to lightspeed that light would only have gained a 1 cm lead in 200,000 years.
No-one knows how it got such incredible speed, but it must have had a strange trip: So close to lightspeed time slows to a crawl and distances contract - the Universe would seem squashed along the direction of travel, and its whole history would pass in days.
 |
| Above: Such energetic particles can cause cancer in astronauts. |
No comments:
Post a Comment