Credit: Kazumasa Kawata, University of Tokyo Institute for Cosmic Ray Research.
This map of the northern sky shows cosmic ray concentrations, with a “hotspot” with a disproportionate number of cosmic rays shown as the bright red and yellow spot, upper right. An international team of physicists using the University of Utah-operated Telescope Array near Delta, Utah, say their discovery of the hotspot should narrow the search for the mysterious source or sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, which carry more energy than any other known particle in the universe.