25 November 2023
Really very striking and totally unprecedented, Nikhef researcher Charles Timmermans calls the impact, in May 2021, of a particle from the cosmos with an extremely high energy. He says is a comment to the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.
The observation is described in the journal Science and was made with the Telescope Array in Utah, North America. The particle had an energy 40 million times higher than the maximum energy of the LHC accelerator at CERN. What the source is remains a mystery. Possibly, says Timmermans, an unknown physical process is involved.
Timmermans (Radboud University) is involved in the Pierre Auger observatory for cosmic rays in Argentina.