High-energy cosmic rays raise questions.

A trio of rare and mysterious cosmic rays of the highest energy ever recorded may be the first signs of fundamental physical processes in deep space that have not been seen even in the most powerful particle accelerators. University of Chicago physicist David Schramm and his colleagues indicate that the three cosmic rays, which were detected in the early 1990s, may be fundamentally different from the trillions of ordinary cosmic rays that bombard the Earth every day.

"These three events are so much more energetic than any others that they really stick out like a sore thumb. Our analysis suggests that they may be created in entirely different processes from ordinary cosmic rays. This would be very exciting because they would be the first evidence we have of the exotic processes of the Grand Unification Scale that created all the matter in the universe." The three events--10 times more energetic than the highest energy cosmic rays ever previously seen--were detected in Russia in 1990, in Utah in 1991, and in Japan in 1992.

Schramm suggests that the ultra-high-energy particles may have been produced by defects in the "false vacuum" that preceded massive expansion in the early universe by topological defects left over from the early universe, or by the quantum-mechanical decay of supermassive elementary particles that are far beyond the reach of even the most powerful particle accelerators.

Most cosmic rays are the nuclei of atoms that have been accelerated to very high velocities--and therefore energies--by exploding stars or powerful magnetic fields in...