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Antarctic Experiment Finds Puzzling Distribution of Cosmic Rays

Posted by timothy on from the this-way-to-the-aliens dept.

pitchpipe writes "A puzzling pattern in the cosmic rays bombarding Earth from space has been discovered by an experiment buried deep under the ice of Antarctica. ... It turns out these particles are not arriving uniformly from all directions. The new study detected an overabundance of cosmic rays coming from one part of the sky, and a lack of cosmic rays coming from another." The map of this uneven distribution comes from the IceCube neutrino observatory last mentioned several days ago.

2 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Huzzah! by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would be great if they'd actually found the center of the universe, in contradiction to all previous theories, since that would allow a hole in relativity that you might be able to squeeze FTL through. At least as far as i understand it some methods of FTL would be non-paradoxical if there was actually a universal reference frame instead of everything being, well, relative.

    Unfortunately i'm sure there's a much more mundane explanation for the phenomenon which they will eventually discover.

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    1. Re:Huzzah! by mangu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At least as far as I understand it some methods of FTL would be non-paradoxical if there was actually a universal reference frame instead of everything being, well, relative.

      This universal reference exists and is known by scientists, google for cosmic microwave dipole.

      Our galaxy is moving at 627 km/s in relation to the microwave background radiation of the universe, which is the nearest direct effect of the Big Bang that we can observe.