On October 15, 1991, a cosmic ray detector in Utah observed something that has never been seen before or since.

It was a cosmic ray with more energy than anything ever observed and more energy than most scientists even thought possible.

When one of the first researchers saw the data, they responded by simply saying,

oh my God.

Learn more about the O.M.G. Particle, what it was and what it means on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. The way science is supposed to work in theory is that someone comes up with a hypothesis

and then develops an experiment to test it. Much of science works that way, but there are certain

things that you simply can't conduct experiments on.

Astronomy is such a discipline.

It's based on observation.

They observe the universe as it is, and then try to create hypotheses that explain all of their observations in a coherent manner.

But every so often there is an observation that throws a wrench into everything.

It requires a complete reappraisal of what we know, and the theories used to describe what we know.

This episode is about such an observation which took place in 1991.

Before I get into the details of what happened in 1991, there are several things I'll need to explain to help make sense of everything.

And the first thing is understanding what cosmic rays are.

I've previously done an entire episode on cosmic rays including the history of their discovery.

Cosmic rays are high energy particles that are zooming around in space in pretty much every direction.

About 90% of all cosmic rays are hydrogen atom nuclei that have been stripped of their electrons,

aka protons. The remaining 10% are atomic nuclei from helium or heavier

atoms which have been stripped of their electrons. These particles are traveling at

velocities near the speed of light, most of which

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