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Boing Boing

A single atomic nucleus hit Utah with the force of a pitched baseball

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 22, 2026
∙ Paid
Simon Swordy / Public domain (via Wikipedia)

On the evening of October 15, 1991, the University of Utah’s Fly’s Eye detector at Dugway Proving Ground recorded a single subatomic particle arriving from space with an energy of about 3.2×10²⁰ electronvolts — an atomic nucleus carrying the kinetic energy of a baseball traveling 100 kilometers per hour. Astro…

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