A new paper provides scientists with a groundbreaking tool for understanding cataclysmic events.
Physicist Glennys Farrar has proposed a testable theory linking ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays to magnetic outflows from neutron star mergers, explaining key features and offering new directions for cosmic research.
Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are the most energetic particles known in the universe, with energies more than a million times greater than those produced by human-made particle accelerators. Despite being discovered over 60 years ago, scientists have yet to develop a fully satisfactory explanation for their origin that accounts for all observed data.
Now, a new theory proposed by physicist Glennys Farrar of New York University offers a compelling and testable model for how UHECRs are generated.
A Breakthrough Theory
“After six decades of effort, the origin of the mysterious highest-energy particles in the universe may finally have been identified,” says Farrar, a Collegiate Professor of Physics and Julius Silver, Rosalind S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor at NYU. “This insight gives a new tool for understanding the most cataclysmic events of the universe: two neutron stars merging to form a black hole, which is the process responsible for the creation of many precious or exotic elements, including gold, platinum, uranium, iodine, and xenon.”
The work, which appears in the journal Physical Review Letters, proposes that UHECRs are accelerated in the turbulent magnetic outflows of Binary Neutron Star mergers—spewed out from the merger remnant, prior to formation of the final black hole. The process simultaneously generates powerful gravitational waves—some already detected by scientists at the LIGO-Virgo collaboration.
Explaining Long-Standing Puzzles
Farrar’s Physical Review Letters proposal explains, for the first time, two of the most mysterious features of UHECRs: the tight correlation between a UHECR’s energy and its electric charge and the extraordinary energy of a handful of the very highest energy events.
Stemming from Farrar’s analysis are two consequences that can provide experimental validation in future work:
- The very highest energy UHECRs originate as rare “r-process” elements, such as xenon and tellurium, motivating a search for such a component in the UHECR data.
- Extremely high-energy neutrinos, originating from UHECR collisions, are necessarily accompanied by the gravitational wave produced in the parent neutron star merger.
Reference: “Binary Neutron Star Mergers as the Source of the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays” by Glennys R. Farrar, 28 February 2025, Physical Review Letters.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.081003
The research was supported, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation (PHY-2013199, PHY-2413153).
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1 Comment
These images show the merger of two neutron stars recently simulated using a new supercomputer model. The merger amplifies and scrambles the merged magnetic field. A black hole forms and the magnetic field becomes more organized, eventually producing structures capable of supporting the jets that power short gamma-ray bursts.
GOOD.
Inviscid, incompressible, and isotropic spaces can form spatiotemporal vortices through topological phase transitions. These spatiotemporal vortices can form extremely complex spatiotemporal structures through spin and self-organization.
Topological spins create everything, topological spins shape the world.