Oh-My-God particle facts for kids

The Oh-My-God particle was a super tiny bit of matter or energy that moved incredibly fast. It was first spotted on the evening of October 15, 1991, over a place called Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, USA. Its discovery really surprised many scientists who study space.

This particle had a huge amount of energy, about 50 joules. To give you an idea, that's as much energy as a baseball (weighing about 142 grams) thrown at 100 kilometers per hour! It was also 50 times more powerful than collisions in the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

The speed of the Oh-My-God particle was almost as fast as light itself. If it raced a beam of light for a whole year, it would only fall behind by an incredibly tiny distance, less than a millionth of a millimeter. This means it was almost perfectly keeping up with light.

Since this first amazing event, at least 15 other similar super-energetic particles have been recorded by scientists.

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