SUPERNOVA WRECKAGE BLASTS OUT COSMIC RAYS

Astronomers tracked cosmic rays to objects that launch particles with energy ten times greater than the Large Hadron Collider

- Robert Lea

Some space radiation crashing into Earth has an explosive origin. Astronomers spotted wreckage from a supernova explosion potentially capable of blasting out high energy particles – or cosmic rays – that frequently bombard Earth. Their new findings link shock waves and wreckage created by dying stars to natural high-energy proton accelerators in space, dubbed PeVatrons. These intriguing cosmic accelerators – which receive their name from their ability to boost the energies of particles to extreme petaelectronvolt (PeV) levels – have never been conclusively identified.

A handful of suspected PeVatrons were already fingerprinted before this study, including one at the centre of our Milky Way. The research team says their new find of a supernova explosion’s leftovers – a cloud of material called G106.3+2.7 – could be the most promising candidate yet. The wreckage lurks 2,600 light years from Earth, possesses a comet shape and has a bright pulsar at one end. Because neutron stars form when stars undergo gravitational collapse, which also launches out supernovae, there’s good reason for researchers to think the pulsar and the supernova cloud were created by the same violent event.