Ultra-high-energy cosmic radiation as a research area investigates cosmic rays with energies typically above 10¹⁸ eV, focusing on their origins, acceleration mechanisms, propagation through intergalactic and galactic magnetic fields, and interactions with cosmic microwave background photons (e.g., Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin suppression). The field integrates astroparticle physics, high-energy astrophysics, and cosmology, using extensive air-shower observatories, fluorescence telescopes, and surface detector arrays to measure energy spectra, arrival directions, and mass composition. Research addresses candidate sources such as active galactic nuclei or gamma-ray bursts, tests hadronic interaction models at energies beyond terrestrial accelerators, and constrains fundamental physics, including Lorentz invariance and particle cross-sections at extreme energies.
Astronomers have proposed a new explanation for the mysterious Cygnus Bubble, a vast cloud of ultra-high-energy gamma rays stretching thousands of light-years across the sky. While the bubble has generally been linked to ...
Cosmic rays are made primarily of protons with a few electrons sprinkled in, and they can reach energies even higher than what human-made accelerators can produce. Considering human-made accelerators, such as the Large Hadron ...
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2026
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The US Government has released a new trove of documents on cases of "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAPs)—many of which would have been described in the past as unidentified flying objects or UFOs—including photos, videos ...
Astronomy
May 13, 2026
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There may be an ultraheavy explanation for the mystery surrounding the origins of the highest-energy particles ever observed. Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are particles from space that strike Earth with energies far beyond ...
Astronomy
May 7, 2026
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A detector buried deep in Antarctic ice has captured the first experimental evidence of a predicted but never-before-seen phenomenon: radio pulses generated when high-energy cosmic rays slam into the ice sheet and trigger ...
In the exotic world of particle physics, neutrinos may be the most mysterious members. They rarely interact with other matter, have almost no mass, and have no electrical charge. These characteristics make them extremely ...
Astronomy
Apr 24, 2026
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Spanish astronomers have conducted a near-infrared study of an ultra-high energy gamma-ray source designated LHAASO J2108+5157. The new study, published February 11 on the arXiv preprint server, tries to unravel the mysterious ...
The KM3NeT collaboration is a large research group involved in the operation of a neutrino telescope network in the deep Mediterranean Sea, with the aim of detecting high-energy neutrino events. These are rare and fleeting ...
Cosmic rays are extremely fast, charged particles that travel through space at nearly the speed of light. The Amaterasu particle was detected in 2021 by the Telescope Array experiment in the U.S. It is the second-highest-energy ...
Astronomy
Feb 5, 2026
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The last gasp of a primordial black hole may be the source of the highest-energy "ghost particle" detected to date, a new MIT study proposes.
Astronomy
Sep 18, 2025
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