The Earth is bombarded with cosmic rays all the time. We have been able to monitor the
energy of these cosmic ray particles for many years. In theory, there should be a maximum
limit to the amount of energy these particles possess and yet we keep discovering more and
more particles that seem to break the Universe’s Energy limit. Let’s dive in and find out
more.
According to mainstream science, there is a hard physical limit on the maximum possible
speed in our Universe. This is the speed of light. Photons are considered to be massless
particles so can achieve this maximum velocity. If however, you are a particle with mass then
it is never actually possible to achieve this speed, instead, you can only approach it.
No matter how much energy you put into that particle, it will always be slower than the
speed of light.
This all assumes that the particles are being accelerated in an empty vacuum and space is
simply not like this. There are obviously particles of mass but also plenty of stray
photons spread across the universe. At normal speeds, these don’t really play much of
a role in slowing these fast particles down but as the speeds start to approach the speed
of light they can exert a significant frictional effect, forcing the fast-moving particle to
slow down below a specific energy limit.
The main retardation should actually come from photons left over from the Big Bang.
According to the Big Bang theory the early universe was flooded with photons, far more
than we have today. More than 1 billion for every proton or neutron in the Universe. Today
they believe these photons are still around but exist as the cosmic background radiation.
Now in our local neighbourhood, these cosmic background photons are dwarfed by those produced
by the Sun but in intergalactic space, these become a significant factor.
This means that cosmic rays should have a maximum energy limit as they travel through
space they are decelerated by these photons until they are all below this limit.
The problem is that for the last 30 years we have been detecting particles that exceed
this limit. And this means that there must be something fundamentally wrong with our
understanding of the universe and particle physics.
At the moment the large hadron collider is only capable of accelerating particles to
about one-millionth of the energies we see from these cosmic particles. At these much
lower speeds, the interaction with photons plays no role at all in slowing the particles
down. They believe that at much higher energies the proton is able to interact with the photon
in a different way. In quantum mechanics, photons can also be thought of as an electron
and a positron pair. If the proton has about 1million electron volts of energy then it
has double the rest-mass energy of an electron at around 500,000 electron volts. It is thought
that if you have enough energy to create a particle you are also able to interact with
them. This interaction should cause a loss of energy. These interactions should be rare
but if the particle travels for long enough across the vast distances of our universe
it will start to have a significant effect on its speed and energy.
If the energy of the proton is even higher then the energy can actually create pions
which would drain this energy even faster. Each time by 20%. After travelling for just
100-200 million years through the intergalactic medium all the protons should fall below the
limiting energy. And yet they appear not to!
The most extreme example of ultra-high energy cosmic rays occurred 30 years ago. The Fly
Eye camera in Utah recorded a cosmic particle with 3.2x10^20 eV of energy and was dubbed
the Oh-My-God particle. Since then we have continued to register these high energy particles
which according to the current model simply should not exist.
So how can this be explained in the current model?
The first option would be that the high energy particles are not produced in the far-flung
universe but are much more local meaning that they have not had time to drop below the limit.
The problem here is what would create these high energy particles.
The second possibility is that the particles are not just protons but are composed of a
heavier particle that would have a higher energy limit. If we examine iron this has
56 protons and neutrons and therefore its energy limit can exceed 10^21 electron volts.
Let just take a little step back here as there are several aspects that need to be discussed.
I have talked many times about the many many issues with the Big Bang and to me this is
another thorn in its side. If there was no cosmic background radiation then there would
not be this deceleration of the cosmic ray particles and therefore no limit on this maximum
energy. What we see as CMBR is more likely caused by something much more local in our
galaxy or a serious mistake in their equipment and analysis of their data as Pierre Robitaille
has pointed out.
It is far more likely that the source of these high energy particles is indeed more local.
Halton Arp had already shown that the majority of cosmic rays seem to originate from Virgo
cluster which as we have seen in the Halton Arp evidence series has many active galaxies
and many quasars associated with them.
Hannes Alfven viewed that cosmic rays may originate from relativistic double layers
in interstellar space accelerating ions up to cosmic ray energies. A double layer is
a plasma formation by which a plasma protects itself from the environment. It is analogous
to a cell wall by which the plasma in the biological sense protects itself from the
environment. If an electric discharge is produced between a cathode and an anode there is a
double layer at the cathode and another near the anode, protecting the plasma from this
electrode. Most double layers carry electric currents. A double layer must be treated as
a part of a circuit which delivers current. As neither the double layer nor circuit can
be derived from magnetofluid models of a plasma, such models are useless for treating energy
transfer by means of double layers. They must be replaced by particle models and circuit
theory.
Hannes Alfven felt that double layers in space should be classified as a new type of celestial
object. You still will not find these mentioned in any textbooks! You will also not find any
text book discussing the current that must flow in these plasma in order to create the
magnetic fields that we detect.
We would expect to find these double layers as part of the galactic circuit. When Hannes
Alfven examined radio galaxies he saw that the radio emissions were not coming from the
centre of the galaxy but instead from far out along the lobes. This is exactly where
you would expect to find a galaxies double layer.
It should therefore be of no surprise that we find these cosmic rays coming from the
direction of some of the most active galaxies in our neighbourhood!
Connected to this astronomers recently also recently detected the highest energy gamma-ray
ever. Using China’s Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory they were able to detect
530 photons with energies above 100 tera electron volts with the highest being 1.4PeV.
Again Hannes Alfven felt that both Gamma ray and X-ray burst could be explained by the
explosions of these double layers
These findings cast doubt on the currently accepted mechanism for how these particles
might be generated and once more point to the importance of including the flowing current
in plasma in order to properly model and understand the behaviour of our Universe.