The News
Astronomers detected the highest-energy electrons and positrons ever recorded on Earth, shedding new light on a century-old mystery. Little is known about the origin of these charged particles, known as cosmic rays, which hit Earth from all directions. Looking at a decade of data collected by the HESS Observatory in the Khomas Highland of Namibia, researchers for the first time found cosmic ray electrons with energy levels up to 40 teraelectronvolts — many times higher than the energy produced by nuclear fusion.
The results suggest that the cosmic rays may have been blasted out by one of the most extreme objects in the known universe — an incredibly dense, highly magnetic, collapsed core of a dead star, also known as a pulsar.
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