Milky Way's Mystery Engine Blasts Record-Breaking Cosmic Particle Energies

Imagine a giant invisible machine in space that throws tiny particles called protons at super speeds.

Scientists found such a machine in our Milky Way galaxy.

It is called LHAASO J1912+1014u, and it lives in a part of the sky called the Aquila constellation.

This machine makes protons move faster than any machine humans have ever built.

The protons it shoots have more than one quadrillion electron volts of energy, which is far more than Earth's biggest atom smasher can produce.

At first, scientists thought it was the leftover of an exploded star called a supernova.

But then they saw special light called gamma rays coming from it.

By using three different telescopes, they figured out the light comes from super-fast protons, not electrons.

This tells us the object is a special kind of space accelerator called a PeVatron.

Scientists hope it can help us understand where very fast particles in space come from.