Omegoda: Oh-My-God Particle
Nuclear & Particle Physics arc, page 177 of 193. Back to The Pixelated Physics Universe
Who they are
Omegoda arrives as a single cosmic ray carrying the punch of a thrown baseball.
Omegoda is a character of the Nuclear & Particle Physics arc: drawn in pixels, ruled by one piece of real physics, and never allowed to break it.
The physics
On 15 Oct 1991 the Fly's Eye detector in Utah recorded a cosmic ray with an energy of (3.2 ± 0.9) × 10²⁰ eV, about 51 J in one subatomic particle. At such energies particles lose energy on the cosmic microwave background (the GZK cutoff), so if it was a proton or neutron it very likely travelled less than about 50 Mpc from its source (Elbert & Sommers 1995). Fly's Eye, Utah, 15 Oct 1991; the Telescope Array's "Amaterasu" particle of 27 May 2021 reached 2.44 × 10²⁰ eV.
$$ \begin{gathered} E = (3.2 \pm 0.9) \times 10^{20}\ \text{eV} \approx 51\ \text{J} \end{gathered} $$
| Symbol | Meaning | SI unit |
|---|---|---|
| $E$ | energy of the cosmic-ray particle | eV |
| $\text{eV}$ | electronvolt, 1.602 176 634 × 10⁻¹⁹ J | J |
| $\text{J}$ | joule | J |
Honest caveat: Nobody knows what kind of particle it was.
Status: part of this topic is unsolved, unconfirmed or debated. The text above says which part; treat it as an open question, not settled fact.
Sources
- Bird et al. (1995) Detection of a cosmic ray with measured energy well beyond the expected spectral cutoff due to cosmic microwave radiation, Astrophys. J. 441, 144
- Bird et al. (1995) arXiv preprint
- Telescope Array Collaboration (2023) An extremely energetic cosmic ray observed by a surface detector array, Science
Crossovers
Omegoda meets Streakwin (Cosmic Ray Muon Flux). Streakwin's everyday muons come from cosmic rays hitting the air. Omegoda was one of the rarest of those primaries, at about 3.2 × 10²⁰ eV. What kind of particle it was is still unknown.
Omegoda meets The Silence Beyond (Cosmic Horizon / Observable Limit). The Silence Beyond is the edge of the observable universe, but Omegoda came from much nearer. At such extreme energies, cosmic-ray protons lose energy on the cosmic microwave background (the GZK effect), so they reach us only from within roughly a hundred megaparsecs.
Wear the lore
Concept keywords: Oh-My-God Particle, Omegoda, Nuclear & Particle Physics, physics lore, Pixelated Physics