Over the years, scientists have managed to unveil the existence of quite a view intriguing particles, pushing the entire field of physics forward with each discovery. There's the "God Particle" for instance, aka the Higgs Boson that grants all other particles their masses. There's also the so-called "Oh My God!" particle, an unimaginably energetic cosmic ray.
But now we have a new particle in town. It's named the "sun goddess" particle — and is fittingly extraordinary.
This particle has an energy level one million times greater than what can be generated in even humanity’s most powerful particle accelerators; it appears to have fallen to Earth in a shower of other, less energetic particles. Like the "Oh My God!" particle, these bits come from faraway regions of space and are known as cosmic rays. The particle has been dubbed "Amaterasu" after Amaterasu Ōmikami, the goddess of the sun and the universe in Japanese mythology, whose name means "shining in heaven."
And just as its mythological namesake is shrouded in mystery, so too is the Amaterasu particle. Its discoverers, including Osaka Metropolitan University researcher Toshihiro Fujii, don’t know where the particle came from or indeed what it is. They also still aren't sure what kind of violent and powerful process could have given rise to something as energetic as Amaterasu.
"This is the most energetic charged particle ever detected by the Telescope Array experiment," Fujii told Space.com.
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