back to article Don't panic, but.. ALIEN galaxies are slamming Earth with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

The most energetic cosmic rays bombarding Earth originate from outside our Milky Way Galaxy, according to research published just before the weekend. More than 400 scientists from 18 countries working under the Pierre Auger Collaboration wanted to solve the mystery of where these special rays – containing extremely rare and …

  1. Lysenko

    ...an explosive, massive black hole in their centers...

    Isn't that an "Infinity + 1" paradox? A black hole can't "explode" because the energy required would have to exceed the infinite binding forces of an object of infinite density. All it can do is slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation.

    I'm guessing he's referring to the highly energetic reactions in the accretion disc outside the event horizon, but the wording implies that the black hole itself can generate repulsive forces sufficient to destabilise it's own structural integrity in the same sense that a supernova does which (as I understand it) is impossible because: math.

    1. Degenerate Scumbag

      Re: ...an explosive, massive black hole in their centers...

      "Explosive" is certainly a poor choice of words for an object that can only consume and never repel matter.

      The theory goes that the extreme gravitational and magnetic fields around a supermassive black hole may be capable of accelerating those particles with trajectories that get very close to the event horizon - without actually crossing it - to these phenomenal speeds.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The exact source of the rare high-energy rays remains unknown. Since the cosmic rays are streams of charged particles, they are deflected by the magnetic fields littering the Milky Way, obfuscating the location of the source. It’s just really difficult to know where these came from."

    That's because the aliens living there don't want us to be able to find them.

    I wonder how many other planets have life on them, this can't be the only one.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

        indeed. recent evidence seems to suggest that the only intelligent species we know of so far are the dolphins. may be if that AI development works out, we could finally have something intelligent in charge ...

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

          And the mice...

        2. Stanislaw
          Boffin

          Re: Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

          Dolphins? Surely all they've ever done is muck about in the water having a good time...

          1. CBR600
            Coat

            Re: Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

            Never got on with dolphins. Always found them "clicky". Okay... I'll get my coat.

          2. Pedigree-Pete
            Thumb Up

            Re: Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

            @Stanislaw. If you can get away with just mucking about in the water, all the time, I'd call that very intelligent. :) PP

            Serious question tho'. Don't Octopus qualify as intelligent too?

        3. HkraM
          Joke

          Re: Life... Or"intelligent" life? Not the same thing.

          Dolphins? And of course camels!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Life

        I should have been more specific I meant intelligent life.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Life

          Ever met any, AC? How would you know?

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge
            Boffin

            Re: Life

            "Ever met any, AC? How would you know?"
            Back when I was a juvenile delinquent, rather than a senile one, I had a friend called Jeff Robinson (known colloquially as Superboy). In them dim and distant days, maths exams consisted of 10 questions; answer 6 for 100%. Jeff used to answer all 10, correctly, and frequently used a novel proof.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The meaning of life : Part 5

        "intelligent life"

        There's bugger all down here on earth....

    2. Clunking Fist

      Or they DO want us to find them, but we haven't yet worked out the morse code-type comms embedded in the particle waves?

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: anonymous

      No - we're talking about charged particles, not light. Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei.

      C.

      1. Pompous Git Silver badge

        Re: anonymous

        "No - we're talking about charged particles, not light. Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei."
        Mostly protons, but some (`1%) electrons not usually associated with the nucleus.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: anonymous

          "Mostly protons, but some (`1%) electrons not usually associated with the nucleus."

          - and, a proton is a Hydrogen-1 (protium) nucleus. Most of the other 9% are alpha particles [Helium-2 (diproton)] nuclei.

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    PAR for Our Course

    All your SCADASystems belong to Us .... and we don’t mean the US,

  5. Stanislaw
    Alien

    "A dipolar component of anisotropy is predicted...

    ...with an amplitude that exceeds existing bounds at EeV energies"

    Been saying that for ages. Only last Friday down the pub, for instance. "Lads, " I said, "there's no way these high-energy particles originate from the Milky Way. You wanna know why? Cos they'd have to have a dipolar component of anisotropy with an amplitude bigger than our galaxy can manage. That's why not. And as for that Donald Trump..."

    Etc.

  6. hatti

    Bloo

    Is there a helpline number to call if your bath water temporarily glows blue?

    1. Rich 11 Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Bloo

      Yes, but the flesh will melt off your bones the moment you lift your hand out of the water to reach for the phone.

    2. PNGuinn
      IT Angle

      Re: Bloo

      "Is there a helpline number to call if your bath water temporarily glows blue?"

      Only if it's a super intelligent shade of the colour blue.

      If not, you're fscked.

      And if I gave you the dialling code for Magrathea I'd probably have to kill you.

      Ahhhh .... I do like to use that icon once in a while .... gives one such a nice warm feeling ....

      NURSE!

    3. Fink-Nottle
      IT Angle

      Re: Bloo

      If you experience a BSoD (Blue Spa of Death) you should unplug immediately, followed by a clean in-stall if you suffer any memory leaks.

  7. jake Silver badge

    Don't worry!

    Trump's going to build a wall to keep all those alien energies out!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't worry!

      He has to tweet about it first.

    2. aeonturnip
      Mushroom

      Re: Don't worry!

      He'll be fine in his apartment with the "eight-inch concrete walls" "which is all sealed" - if his hair spray can't get out to damage the ozone layer, those cosmic rays ain't getting in. They're probably a Chinese conspiracy to make US manufacturing non-competitive anyway.

      But, on the offchance that a high-energy particle did enter his head, it would find itself very lonely.

      1. Rich 11 Silver badge

        Re: Don't worry!

        Better not tell him that North Korea has the technology to manipulate the sun into bombarding everyone in the US with a trillion neutrinos every second.

  8. Mystic Megabyte
    Boffin

    one, two, many

    In elReg units how many hookers would it take to excite Trump to 10^18 eV?

    1. Alister

      Re: one, two, many

      I'm not sure there is a corresponding Reg unit... yet!

      1. Cuddles

        Re: one, two, many

        It's about the energy of an adult badger travelling at 0.000000063 % of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum. Or alternatively, the potential energy of a skateboarding rhinoceros suspended 0.0007 linguine above the ground.

  9. Lars
    Coat

    Something wrong?

    "a rate of one per square kilometre per year". And the earth is how many, anybody who had a look at the PDF.

  10. Binra

    The 'electric universe' of charged plasma as communication of energy and information, is implicit to such observations - but joining up the dots is not allowed so much as gradually leaked to the general public.

    Perhaps the term 'alien' rightly belongs to the nature of such thinking - set apart from EVERYTHING as if to define, predict and control... the narrative if not the outcome itself.

    Alien thinking cuckolds truly shared Thought - but is it 'other' or is it simply not true - running as a programming in place of true appreciation?

    In appreciating our 'energetic' environment or relational field - as a synchronicity rather than of actions of 'parts' upon each other - and the intent of 'understanding' the sum of such 'parts' as if the 'whole', Humpty has not fallen - and all the king's motivations and machinations are redundant. However, the program may now run as the reintegrative movement of being to itself - for all awareness of existence is of the same source nature regardless its screen coordinate 'identity'.

    'Space weather' embraces more than 'space' has been designated to be. Awareness is always of tangible witnessing to existence at any and every level. Self-specialness seems to 'set apart' to run its moment of 'victory' over an all embracing unconditional 'love'. "It's love - but not as we know it Jim"

    1. John Mangan

      Now that's what I call...

      ...word salad.

      Did amanfromars and 'faux science slayer' mate?

      1. Francis Boyle

        Must have

        How else could you create someone capable of being so wrong and yet so completely meaningless at the same time?

      2. jake Silver badge

        Re: Now that's what I call...

        I'm fairly certain that amfM is a lot more discerning than that.

    2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      As Casting Perl before Swine? :-)

      Howdy Binra,

      Methinks we can agree all current running alien talk is seed feed for remote virtual command and control of the future and its derivatives with narratives.

      And it has those grounded Earthed beings with more than just an interest in the maintenance of an historical and hysterical status quo which servers to their exclusive executive advantage absolutely terrified of the .... well, Fundamental Evolutionary Change is revolutionary in these times and spaces of ZeroDays.

      Live Operational Virtual Environments are all AI needs and they abound and surround all. And now they flex their IntelAIgent Forces with NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive Employment and Deployment of Special IntelAIgent Sources.

  11. pauly
    Coat

    Fascinating

    So we are being bombarded with proton-torpedoes from another galaxy

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Fascinating

      Yes, just very very slowly...

  12. Shaha Alam

    bloody foreign cosmic particles. comin' over to this galaxy, messing around with our isotopes.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge
      Coat

      We need to remove ourselves from the Universe and the Single cosmos and only allow in the particles we want to have here.

      1. Tigra 07
        Thumb Up

        RE: Terry 6

        We could build a wall? A big beautiful wall. And the aliens will pay for it...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    don't worry, its just intelligent life

    and they are looking for water. Yep, light up the whole planet so they know where to send the galactic slurpy ships.

    We got 3 generations at best before they suck us dry.

    Go science!

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Bollocks to that...

    I stopped reading at "exaelectronvolt-plus (1 × 1018 eV) energetic"

    For fuck's sake it's Monday. The day after the weekend. And I am supposed to understand this article? Not happening.

    Time for the hair of the dog.

    Cheers… Ishy

  15. Mike Shepherd
    Happy

    I got a sudden warm feeling

    You can still sleep soundly at night...Particles with an energy level greater than 10 EeV, and typically arriving from beyond the Milky Way, tend to hit Earth at a rate of one per square kilometre per year.

    That's no consolation if you happen to be standing there at the time. I think 10EeV is about 2J?

    1. Stoneshop
      Boffin

      Re: I got a sudden warm feeling

      That's no consolation if you happen to be standing there at the time. I think 10EeV is about 2J?

      1.602J, to be exact, or 84.92 hamsterseconds.

  16. Ironclad

    ...and yet....

    "particles with an energy level greater than 10 EeV, and typically arriving from beyond the Milky Way, tend to hit Earth at a rate of one per square kilometre per year"

    ..still no superheroes ?

    1. Tigra 07

      Re: ...and yet....

      Are you expecting good mutations like Spiderman or those that could easily be confused with the results of inbreeding and Chernobyl residents?

  17. Robert Moore
    Alien

    A long time ago,

    In a galaxy far, far away...

    Imperial StormTroopers had really bad aim.

    This is just the fall out from missed blaster shots.

  18. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Alien

    Pew Pew Pew!

    Of much interest, and only two years ago:

    The Particle That Broke a Cosmic Speed Limit: Physicists are beginning to unravel the mysteries of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, particles accelerated by the most powerful forces in the universe.

    Only recently, with the discovery of a cosmic ray “hotspot” in the sky, the detection of related high-energy cosmic particles, and a better understanding of physics at more familiar energies, have researchers secured the first footholds in the quest to understand ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. “We’re learning things very rapidly,” said Tim Linden, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.

    ...

    Thomson has his money on threads of galaxies and dark matter called “filaments” that are draped throughout the cosmos and which, at hundreds of millions of light-years long, are among the largest structures in existence. There’s a filament in the direction of the hotspot. “It’s probably something in the filament,” Thomson said. In any case, he added, “we have an idea now of interesting places to look. And all we need to do is collect more data.”

  19. Zash the Bench Geek

    What if...

    ...these particles are a form of communication we have yet to discover?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Perhaps particle jets at the poles of a supermassive black hole?

    That might explain why we don't get them from our galactic center, because the jets aren't aimed our way. But the jets from some distant galaxies are - or rather were aimed where we are now when the particles would be emitted.

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