New theory suggests universe’s highest-energy particles come from binary neutron star mergers, solving 60-year mystery

Amazing stuff!

"A more than 60-year mystery about the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays might be solved by a new theory.

Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the highest-energy particles in the universe. The energies of these beams are more than a million times greater than the highest energies that humans can create. ..."

"... 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.

..."

From the abstract:

"We propose that ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are produced in binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. This scenario can account for the heretofore inexplicable narrow rigidity range of UHECRs because the jets of BNS mergers are generated by a gravitationally driven dynamo and thus are nearly identical due to the narrow range of BNS masses. Observed UHECRs with energies well beyond 100 EeV can be explained as 𝑟-process nuclei, without invoking an exotic source class. Evidence for this mechanism, and its prediction of coincidences between neutrinos above 10 PeV and gravitational waves, are discussed."

New theory suggests universe’s highest-energy particles come from neutron star mergers, solving 60-year mystery

How Do the Universe’s Highest-Energy Particles Originate? (original news release) "New paper gives scientists a groundbreaking tool for understanding cataclysmic events"

Binary Neutron Star Mergers as the Source of the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays (no public access)

These images show the merger of two neutron stars recently simulated using a new supercomputer model. Redder colors indicate lower densities. Green and white ribbons and lines represent magnetic fields. The orbiting neutron stars rapidly lose energy by emitting gravitational waves and merge after about three orbits, or in less than 8 milliseconds. 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.