You may have heard of the God particle, but what about the Oh-My-God particle?

Most people have heard of the God particle due to the media coverage when it was finally discovered, but there’s a similarly nicknamed particle, dubbed the Oh-My-God particle, that was first detected in 1991. It’s an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray, meaning it has far greater energy than a normal cosmic ray—particles of radiation that travel throughout the universe.

Thought to be a proton, this particle shocked scientists with about 20 million times more energy than the highest measured radiation at the time. It wasn’t just a mistake, either. These have been seen at least 15 times since, confirming the phenomenon. The rays are rare, but they do exist.

This ray was thought to be a proton traveling at 0.999 999 999 999 999 999 999 9951c, with c being the speed of light. At that speed, in a year-long race between a photon and the particle, the particle would fall behind only one centimeter every 220 000 years.

This gives a proton the same kinetic energy as a baseball thrown at 60 mph. When you consider that 5 million million (5,000,000,000,000) protons fit in the tip of a pin, the number in a baseball is staggering. It takes that many protons to get the same kinetic energy as this particle. Oh-My-God indeed.

(Source)