How Supernovas Act as Universe’s Largest Particle Accelerators

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Cern's Large Hadron Collider routinely collides particles at energies equivalent to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. If this worries you, then the following fact will either put you at ease or scare the hell out of you. And that's that a particle with the energy of an LHC collision hits every square kilometer of the Earth every single second. And we only relatively recently figured out where these cosmic rays are coming from.
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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt Caplan, Hayley West & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Spacetime is a production of Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2024 PBS. All rights reserved.
End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: / multidroideka
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[@SamuSamuWa]

I love that the detector on the ISS is called ISS-CREAM

[@Greippi10]

It seems like one of the perks of being a scientist is getting to create lots of amusing acronyms.

[@Vatsek]

The new detector will be US-CREAM.

[@Brotherdot]

Now, is that I Scream, or Icecream? 😂

[@lareolanKFP]

NASA really loves playing around with their naming of things.

[@MarsJenkar]

@@Brotherdot In Space (nobody can hear you) S-CREAM?

[@arminkipka]

Pretty fun to think of the really fast ones racing through the universe within seconds in their timeline

[@pappi8338]

That is quite fun! Makes me appreciate all the relative time that I have the pleasure of perceiving

[@rowanbarnes4982]

@@pappi8338okomooo moo oo Ok

[@dr4d1s]

​@@rowanbarnes4982are you ok there buddy? Blink twice if you are having a stroke.

[@pathayes1757]

The video already amazed me, but your comment added a whole new (4th) dimension to my appreciation of this process.

[@saxoman1]

@@pathayes1757 Same, even when I "know" some of these things, someone comes in with a comment like this when I'm not prepared, and blows my mind all over again lol

[@CrafterLudde]

As someone working in the field, I have to applaud the amazing level of this explanation. Really great!

[@JustSuperLightning]

I'm raising grain and my field doesn't seem to help me like your's. What kind of field?

[@fwiffo]

This sounds a lot like how remote control gliders can approach trans-sonic speeds with dynamic soaring. They exploit the boundary between a strong wind going over the top of a hill and the slower air in the shadow of the hill to gain crazy amounts of energy. It's worth searching for a video; it's mind-boggling to watch an unpowered glider ripping through the air at over 500 mph.

[@thedoubster]

Had to look this up and god DAMN, you're right about it being mind-boggling

[@AmatuerHourCoding]

Yeah thought it was click bait. Nope. They do be flying

[@Jesse_359]

These are some of the most fascinating aerodynamic videos I've seen. The fact that that a powerless craft can achieve near trans-sonic speeds is pretty crazy.

[@LevelofClarity]

Sure enough! Read your comment and looked it up. Awesome recommendation! If someone is reading this you should totally check it out. It's pretty wild.

[@demeurecorentin]

I don't thank this channel enough for existing, so thank you. You're in my top 3 best channels on KZbin.

[@SpenceReam]

What are the other two? 😗

[@dylangreen6075]

I never noticed that the first clip of the intro has the camera fly through a double slit! I love it! Haha

[@michaelblacktree]

_"10/10 would smash"_ -CERN

[@DANGJOS]

Probably something more like 1/1 million but yeah 😂

[@SpenceReam]

Hey Siri, play “Crash” by Dave Matthews 💥🎶

[@francoiskriel3445]

This was so well explained. I learned something today I've always wanted to know.

[@c0d3r1f1c]

Always a good day when there’s a new Space Time. Also, I’m happy to say that the audio sounds much better than it did a few months ago!

[@NanoBurger]

I measure cosmic rays by how fogged my photographic film gets despite being in a deep freezer in my basement. Damn you cosmic rays!!!! You are making my Plus-X Pan more grainy!

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

Is it cosmic rays, or radon?

[@jamesharmer9293]

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio An extractor fan ducted from floor level would probably be a good idea if it's suspected radon. Since radon is carcinogenic there might be bigger problems than fogged film.

[@JustSuperLightning]

I ❤️ basement living!

[@fire6163]

Whenever I watch one of these videos I understand about 5% of what's being said, but I always feel 1000 times smarter at the end.

[@svOcelot]

Thank you for this. I watch most of your videos, but even as an EE, I don't understand them all. This one was both interesting & understandable.

[@Zugrwow]

10:50 Had to rewind this moment and remind myself of the scale of the universe. The chances of a given intergalactic particle going through the solar system, let alone hitting Earth, are very tiny. I wonder what is the gold spot where the distance starts outscaling collective galactic activity (supernovae, SMBHs) and the amount of cosmic rays that reach us start to decrease.

[@jamespearsoniii914]

The first thing this reminds me of is: hail stones on earth- the drops fall, freeze, get blown back up in the cloud… literally risen and repeat! The longer the drop can stay in the sky, the bigger it can get In these terms, the more energy it can absorb

[@TheJoker-gg8hc]

You want a medal for regurgitating kindergarten lessons?

[@uruuruis]

PBS SPACETIME IS THE TEACHER I'VE ALWAYS WANTED!

[@thomascaldwell184]

Yet another awesome video, PBS Space Time! Much appreciation.

[@ms-ds3wv]

This is by far on of the best episode in a while. Stellar good craftsmanship :)

[@ericthompson3982]

Pun intended?

[@tiborsaas]

This new credits section is really something. I love you found this smooth collaboration to match content with visuals no textbook can reproduce.

[@ItzSwapHD]

I've been a viewer for a while now. And i wanna thank all of you for making this content. I have learned so much although its really heavy stuff and it takes alot of time to understand. You all are excellent teachers of all the fun stuff we have discovered in S P A C E T I M E

[@pathayes1757]

Ugh. I’m having trouble conceptualizing the mechanics of a shockwave, despite the incredible and simple explanation. Time to go down a new rabbit hole. Thank you so much for helping keep me curious!

[@Shacthulhu]

Great episode! My fiancé and I were just discussing the OMGP yesterday evening. Also, thanks for launching what will in moments be my next t-shirt purchase!

[@marchman3000]

Great video guys! Supernova shocks make for some really interesting science! Along with accelerating particles, they also help produce a lot of x-rays which can give us insight into the elements produced by the supernova.

[@POLICECAMERA6688]

Wow, this supernova video is so interesting! I learned more about how they work and there were many other surprises. Another great video, PBS Space Time!

[@chrismward]

how about merging black holes? Seems like you could get some quickly accelerating particles that get freed up when the event horizons intermingle?

[@damonedrington3453]

The resulting gravitational pull of the black hole would likely severely diminish their speed, especially as the gravity is only going to increase.

[@Console.Log01]

​@@damonedrington3453gravitational slingshotting might otherwise accelerate particles, though

[@michaelobrien5891]

​@@damonedrington3453but they are theorized to counterintuitively give off Hawking radiation, shrinking down until they ultimately end in a cataclysm of high energy particles.

[@garethdean6382]

At the time of merger black holes will tend to have 'cleared out' their neighborhood, leaving very little to be affected. They also mostly release gravitational waves, which are very poor at accelerating particles. As such they have so far only been detected gravitationally.

[@stuartmaclean8668]

The massive Local Void is certainly very good at being the strongest particle accelerator given the Amaterasu particle came from the Local Void, as well as the gamma ray dipole. Though having just seen Anton's video about the M87 observations about the jets of the supermassive black hole I would say the ergosphere of said black hole is a candidate for most powerful.

[@rhkean]

I know it's not the same thing, however, I was reminded of how hail is produced as Matt was describing the shockwave particle acceleration

[@Kokally]

1:49 I always wonder if people can really conceptualize the energy of the OMG particle since we don't deal with things the size of a particle in daily life. So my shorthand is to say that if the OMG Particle were the actual mass of a baseball, the resultant energy release would have been equivalent to the Tsar Bomba.

[@aintaintaword666]

Wikipedia says that particle was travelling at 0.9999999999999999999999951c, if a baseball was travelling at that speed, its energy would be 4*10^27 Joules, which is the whole Sun's energy content for 10 seconds. Or roughly a *trillion* tsar-bombas.

[@debrachambers1304]

@@aintaintaword666 Energy content or energy output? (I'm guessing the latter.)

[@zacharywong483]

Fantastic script and visuals, as always!

[@PendragonDaGreat]

2:00 I've heard this stated before but without anything quantifiable to it. When you say a "well thrown baseball" do you mean 60mph (very hard throw for most non-athletes) or 100+mph (elite pitching) because that's a difference of almost 3 times the kinetic energy. Taking one to the leg is gonna sting and bruise, the other has a very high chance of broken bones.

[@gordonfreeman5083]

I have heard that at such large scales (for a particle) the scientists are more interested in difference in magnitude than actual value. So for general information, the difference between 10^2 to 10^4 is much bigger than the difference between 6*10^2 or 10*10^2. In other words, its most likely that there are several OMG-like particles whose energy levels have a range similar to range of KE of a "well thrown baseball".

[@garethdean6382]

The particle had an estimated energy of 320 exa-eV. If we assume a standard baseball of 140g, this converts to a speed of 28m/s, about 100kph or 63mph. So your first guess was pretty on the money.

[@TheReaverOfDarkness]

Somewhere in the vast universe, a group of people were standing around minding their own business when one of them was struck by a cosmic ray and exploded.

[@tylermcnally8232]

Doubt it.

[@TheReaverOfDarkness]

@@tylermcnally8232 How come? Do you think that it's just impossible for stable long-term habitable worlds to exist so close to a cosmic accelerator?

[@SpenceReam]

This channel is the best… Wish we could get 4 new episodes per day 😅

[@DomyTheMad420]

i always imagined the blast was what gave it the speed not the shockwave and some funky behavior :o

[@aridpheonix]

amazing work as usual. thank you so much!

[@thetrevor861]

I love this site. I wish I could understand what T F is going on. Keep it up, brilliant !

[@anata.one.1967]

8:18 Is it possible to get a charged particle to resonate between the magnetic sandwich, what if that can be achieved by only moving it close to speed of light. Will that be the most energetic particle?

[@spencerwenzel7381]

Science clic animations in pbs spacetime!

[@KeithCooper-Albuquerque]

Great video, Matt!

[@Pecisk]

Now those are very nice designs for merch 😅 Also really interesting explanation. Didn't thought about shockwave effect, but I guess everything in space time is big and thus can have enormous effect on particle energy.

[@ShokkuKyushu]

I know i'm off topic but i want to ask:what is the correct equation that expresses the irradiance on the surface of an object that travels through the interstellar medium at relativistic speed?what i mean is : what is the kinetic energy received per unit of time by a square meter of an object that travels in space at a good fraction of the speed of light? I thought like this : with a N of 1 particle per cm³ i got a density of 2e-21 kg/m³,then :if the object is travelling at 0.9c it means that in 1 of ITS seconds it's travelling 0.9*2.294*299792458=6.18e8 m,so 1.27e-12 kg are impacting each second at 0.9 c on a m²,so an irradiance of 140 kW/m².Is this correct? Thanks

[@garethdean6382]

That's pretty good, though at relativistic speeds the CMB also becomes an issue, since its photons appear to be at higher energy and greatly outnumber massive particles. Closer to c their share of the irradiance becomes increasingly important.

[@ryangoodingrg]

Great video! Love Particle Accelerator information. When is the 2024 PBS Survey?

[@romajimamulo]

Wait, what was that ankle and knee stuff on that graph showing the energies?

[@bigsarge2085]

Fascinating!

[@nomadicsynth]

Great to see some new DLC in the merch store

[@AM-uw3gp]

That thumbnail is awesome by the way 👍🏻

[@animeshpanda2960]

Wonderful video, subscribed

[@jannor321]

I see PBS Space Time upload I click

[@crowlsyong]

I love pbs spacetime

[@davidtatro7457]

I don't know if it's funny or sad that many people are still fearful about the power of human-made particle accelerators when the entire earth is constantly bombarded with particles from space which are at equal to far greater energies.

[@cholten99]

Always great, just a shame Matt doesn't do question any more. I wanted to ask if gravitational waves, being wave-like but not in a medium, also have shock waves and if that can contribute to cosmic ray energies?

[@Mohammad__M__]

I think the particle acceleration discussed here depends on EM force & Pauli exclusion principle making particles push each other away to produce a shockwave, but Gravity can't do that so I'd expect it to need a totally different mechanism to accelerate particles

[@garethdean6382]

Gravitational waves move at or around the speed of light. As such it's very difficult for them to form a distinct shockwave. They also interact with matter only very weakly so aren't good at giving their energy to particles.

[@whjk83921]

This is a good one. I learned something new and cool!

[@EternumInfinitronite]

Please will you make a video on the creation of X Ray Cavities in AGN Clusters and role of shocks and jets!?

[@distantignition]

Can we have a PBS Space Time for Kids? It's not necessarily for kids. Just for those of us that sometimes struggle to keep up with the concepts in videos and also enjoy bright colors and funny noises.

[@whobegone]

@user-fc8xw4fi5vyou don’t really need to dive deep into tensor calculus to know what is going on in pbs space time, just metrics

[@OmateYayami]

Yea, but it would viewership if they supplemened it with math IMO. I think this is the only thing that separates this channel from actual science course and makes it popsci. Most people don't enjoy math. It would also take much more effort to prepare and consume. I think current formula is optimal for many folks. We're outliers. I personally greatly enjoyed 3b1b's materials with related math.

[@randyselvidge5594]

Watch Bill Nye

[@MorphSenior]

That's kind of what scishow space was

[@DVIs101]

That's Kurtzgesagt for me. 😅

[@zantar04]

When is that shirt coming to the store? I need one! Also, I love the videos. Thanks for the work you and the pbs spacetime team do.

[@robertc2214]

You are a Hero...doing things that my Dad did to inspire my mind when I was young....before he drank the Kool Aid and then began to deny the stuff he used to believe in..(tied to politics and religion...a common story, I am sure).

[@TheVeryHungrySingularity]

this whole video is one big WMP audio visualizer

[@lady_draguliana784]

so what you're saying is: Sci-Fi space battles COULD have sounds of explosions so long as they were electromagnetic and charged-particle expulsions, rather than high-explosive atmospheric waves 😋🤣

[@Jesse_359]

Oh everything will make noise out there - but you'd need a really big microphone to hear most of it. :D

[@lady_draguliana784]

@@Jesse_359 Star Wars: VINDICATED! 🤣

[@Flesh_Wizard]

You'd only hear them over radio and on Wi Fi though

[@lady_draguliana784]

@@Flesh_Wizard depends on a lot of factors, but a powerful electromagnetic field can cause ferromagnetic materials to oscillate: making sound and heat: which is how speakers and induction cooking work. since we don't know the particulars of how Star-Wars/star trek etc. material sciences, or any of their sciences/systems, work, we lack the knowledge of the variables to tell. I choose to suspend my disbelief 😋

[@TheDillyum]

Best videos! Commenting just to boost you guys!

[@Clover-qz8nl]

This is the only show where I want to listen to an episode twice in a row 🫶 it’s so relaxing to listen to the whole episode 🍀 thank youuuu for making such incredible content for us all to enjoy ♾️ keep it coming it’s so good 😊

[@robbabcock_]

Great stuff, as always.

[@Numba003]

This wound up being very fascinating! Thank you for the video! I guess it hadn't really occurred to me to wonder how such collosal speeds could be generated for such particles naturally and relatively commonly (cosmically speaking). God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)

[@m1ste2tea]

I love the new end credits music.

[@Pratanjali64]

omg SpaceTime I love you!

[@windlessoriginals1150]

Thank you

[@chrisg9840]

Question: What environment are these experiments done in? And how do you simulate intergalactic space in a tube?

[@AnimusInvidious]

Incredible job describing hard-to-describe things.

[@AlMiGa]

Which is more accurate? To say that the particles bounce randomly or that they bounce chaotically?

[@garethdean6382]

Choatically, in that their movement isn't determined by underlying randomness but a complicated environment.

[@AlMiGa]

@@garethdean6382 thanks for that.

[@vibekewl]

Fantastic! Thanks, @spaceTime. You listened to my feedback about the loud fanfare at the end of the video and made it more calm and relaxing. Now I won't wake up as the video finishes 😃. And don't worry, I watch them again in the morning if I have fallen asleep ❤.

[@RedgeEric]

wave field correlates, acoustical guidance should work for other spectrums if you can figure the layout. need to take all this high energy theories and scale it down to workable areas like sound.

[@malavoy1]

The acceleration of particles by shockwaves sounds like the EM version of gravitational sling shotting, if a bit more complicated. Do charged particles undergo the same level of redshifting due to the universe expanding as light, or do they keep the energy they had to start with (ignoring interactions along the way)?

[@garethdean6382]

Massive particles will resdshift, losing momentum and, after infinite shift, coming to a halt. Though given the energies involved (spanning many orders of magnitude while the redshift since the CMB was emitted only spans about TWO orders of magnitude) this shouldn't sap too much energy from particles, even those emitted long ago.

[@jesselorenz6750]

Is the ISM magnetic field taught like a guitar string or hanging like loose threads? If it’s taught, does it snap back into its original position at some point? If it’s loose does it just keep pulling more and more loose threads with it?

[@suan22]

12:33 "How do you do fellow simulations?" :)

[@rwdestefano]

Matt, we really missed you and your partner at 'How the Light Gets In' at Hay on Wye this year. Next year, maybe?

[@NoXion100]

Anyone else think that Matt looks really good in a hoodie?

[@Z-A-K-49]

If top quarks decay before they can form hadrons, does that mean we could theoretically observe the lone quark's color charge? How do you reconcile this with color confinement?

[@Z-A-K-49]

Also, could you do a video on top quark condensate?

[@DLuniz]

What would happen in the accretion disk of two blacks holes with opposite spin? Could that act like a collider in some cases?

[@MCsCreations]

Fascinating!

[@tornyu]

If magnetars are a prominent source, should we expect to see particles coming from them frequently? Compared to the sporadic particles generated by collisions and explosions

[@robertbloch1063]

Can you please make a video about what happens when massive stars die? What are the stages of supernova? How come that matter is bounced by surface of newly formed neutron star (or even black hole?), overcomes massive gravity and explodes?

[@dpeYoutube]

I have a question that this weeks episode and the 2 on blackholes and quantum information made me think of. If one were to force 2 electrons close enough together that the system collapsed in to a blackhole, based on conservation laws it seems like such a black hole's decay must also produce 2 electrons as well. Would that be an accurate understanding? It seems like if it didn't both conservation and information would be lost, but maybe I am missing something.

[@garethdean6382]

Yes, though in this case the system, is limited enough that only one output is possible. Problems arise when one initial state can give rise to many possible outputs. For example the case of two *protons* forming a hole. In that case we may emit two positrons plus many photons plus two neutrinos OR recover the two protons. We can lose the 'identity' of the matter that produced the hole in that case, even though conservation laws are respected.

[@dpeYoutube]

@garethdean6382 Right, the more complex the system, the more possible outcomes that still follow conservation laws, and the harder it would be to reverse engineer the initial inputs. If I'm understanding correctly. That feels an awful lot, like what happens with feynman diagrams. Where we can know what the inputs and outputs of the system are. But whatever happens in the middle is (almost literally, in this case) a black box.

[@garethdean6382]

@@dpeKZbin With Feynman diagrams we usually have an organized method to get a theoretically exact result. Two electrons interacting electromagnetically will do so largely via a virtual photon, with a second term involving a virtual electron-positron pair, a third even smaller term... Like calculating pi via an infinite sum, there are rules and the process is the same each time. Black holes as we currently understand them seem to break this process. Hydrogen is stable, its proton-electron diagram results in no change. But if you tossed protons into a hole and got out positrons, you could take hydrogen and convert it completely into energy. Black holes seem to offer possibilities that they shouldn't.

[@michaelshortland8863]

I was wondering if electrons moving through a wire in A/C current are like a wave? then would it be possible to create an electronic shock wave within the wire.???

[@garethdean6382]

Yes, and even a simple circuit can create shockwaves in a wire. With a careful setup you can even detect this (kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHK7p2dvmamEgNk ) Capacitors are good at creating 'sharp' shockwaves, but an issue is that the density of the wire itself generally prevents anything from 'surfing' the wave to gain energy.

[@dmytrosmyrnov]

My main insight from this video - galaxies got lobes! (awful ferengi laughter)

[@mkk3a]

5:58 As a civil engineer, I can't agree with the rebar-in-concrete analogy.

[@seattlegrrlie]

This is what we have to deal with if we want to travel through space. Charged particles with the energy of baseballs, huge magnetic fields twisted and writhing. Space isn't empty, it's just huge

[@0ptixs]

How do those magnetic tangles from the supernova hold on to those particles if they are weak and the particles span light years? Maybe I'm missing something

[@garethdean6382]

They are weak, but large. A weak force over light years of distance will still add up.

[@nicklang7670]

Could the black hole jet streams be a result of black holes colliding? Could these black hole jet streams be what could send us gravitational wave interference?

[@jonashartmann6687]

Love the shirt :D

[@Quadr44t]

Ok, so this seems impossible to me, but would it be possible to reconstruct the sound waves present in objects in space, just from the reflected/emitted light? If it is possible, that would be a great (well, potentially. Depends on what it'll yield. Interesting is a better word) source for sound design. Like use the data to construct a waveform, or resynthesise it into an audio sample, and use that as a starting point for something (transposing the freqs so they fall in a nice register).

[@Quadr44t]

@@quantum_relativity Yeah you can use waveforms of EM and recreate that in audio (i.e. instead of oscillations in electric/magnetic field, make it into oscillations in air density. That's a cool idea too. But I know it has been done. What I ask is, is there a way to monitor from afar, what the soundwaves are doing in the object. Like, does it leave an imprint on the light somehow, and could you isolate said imprint. Recreating what kinda pressure waves are going on in the object?

[@Quadr44t]

@@quantum_relativity Woo, that is so cool. And it does hold up actually. It's similar to how light waves "slow down" in denser media. More matter, more atoms, that interect with electric field, shifting phase gradially over time, which equates to shorter/longer wavelengths, and why it changes angle. 3blue1brown can explain it better than me tho. I wonder, if the audio contribution to the light-sound interaction can be isolated. But then again that might be a bit meaningless if it is such a constant back and forth anyway.

[@the_eternal_student]

I have been fairly confused about why you were analyzing black holes in terms of information, until I found myself searching for black hole computer on a search engine, and came across an article in the Scientific American explaining "It from bit".

[@the_eternal_student]

I also have now found an article from MIT Technology Review as to why the universe is not a computer at all.

[@scionofdorn9101]

What’s The Universe’s Strongest Particle Accelerator? Me after a night of ill-advised Taco Bell.

[@Secret_Takodachi]

Say no to 4th meal or make it at home. Your body will thank you! 🫶

[@Jack_Redview]

My mom when she tossed the flippers at me , fastest particle accelerator I’ve ever seen

[@Vatsek]

So you got hit three times?

[@TysonJensen]

¡las chanclas!

[@jacksonwilliams8971]

I may just be betraying my trademark American ignorance, but this exchange is confusing me more than the black hole complementarity video Edit: punctuation

[@DGCMWC]

I don't get it

[@Jack_Redview]

@@DGCMWC you gotta be either Hispanic or Asian to understand lol 😆

[@usernametaken6566]

😅enjoying the array of particles that pass through my body every day, undetected , yet real.

[@snakepliskin6391]

Wait I'm confused why the magnetic field is increasing by gathering other magnetic fields throughout space. Are the fields it is collecting caused by charged particles moving through space or by distant fields? Also wouldn't the magnetic field be constantly changing trajectory as it runs into more charged particles? Since it has to travel at a set particle speed it will never catch up to a field that would add to it that is traveling in the same direction right? Also if it were to run into another magnetic field travelling in the opposite direction that would overlap in such a way as to increase the fields strength the effect would only be temporary as the charged particles would eventually pass by right? Could temporary field strength increases help accelerated the particles it is shooting out? Also dumb question why doesn't the proton bond to one of the moving electrons in the electromagnetic field?

[@nirnama.aksara]

Is accretion disk of a black hole also a really powerful particle accelerator ?

[@evangonzalez2245]

Yep

[@tyrantworm7392]

Yes, AGN's are the most powerful and largest particle accelerators in the universe. 😁

[@wintermath3173]

I remember hearing somewhere that the puzzle of high energy cosmic rays is that they should collide with the interstellar and intergalactic medium over time (over great distances) and turn into a larger number of lower energy cosmic rays? Which I took to mean that the sources of these ultra high energy cosmic rays have to be relatively nearby. Is there any truth to that?

[@stevenwojtysiak6392]

Is it possible, if there were black holes in the early universe, that the highest energy particles were created close to the big bang and have been orbiting near the event horizon and somehow getting ejected. with time dilation, they might still be relatively young even though coming from the beginning of our universe.

[@garethdean6382]

Not really. The closer a particle moves to c, the more tight its orbit around a black hole must be to avoid falling in or being ejected. The 'photon sphere' orbit is totally unstable; ANY disturbance to it results in a particle quickly falling out of orbit. As such very energetic particles simply can't orbit a black hole for any period of time, they're too easily disturbed.

[@kyromaniaentertainment]

Amazing

[@strandedtimetraveler8435]

LHC = Cosmically mundane energy levels - we need more powaaaahhh!!

[@grokeffer6226]

Interesting stuff.

[@ForOrAgainstUs]

How do the jets of an active galactic nucleus eventually form clouds at the ends? It's like the jet is travelling through a medium and eventually succumbs just like a puff of smoke or a vape cloud.

[@JustinMShaw]

That's assumed to be exactly what's happening. The intergalactic medium is thought to be super thin, but still there. The thinner the gas, the larger the lobes as it takes more time and distance to slow the jets down.

[@denysvlasenko1865]

The sound wave and shock wave illustrations are both incorrect. Sound wave isn't leaving molecules rocking back and forth. After wave has passed, the air is as motionless as it was before. IOW: the sound wave, at minimum, can have just one "wave" passing throught essentially unchanged medium. Shock wave isn't just "molecules moving faster than speed of sound", it's a wave which heats the medium so much that sound speeds are DIFFERENT across the wave, and sound speed behind it is *faster* than before it (and faster than the speed of shock wave) due to hotter and denser gas. *This* is what causing sound "from behind" to catch up and pile on into a single large jump of pressure. The gas behind shock wave is hotter, and moving in the direction of passed wave. The illustration at 3:30 shows something totally different.