Mystery

It's a relief to escape temporarily from news on planet earth and read news of outer space and theoretical physics instead. Some Japanese scientists have managed to get themselves into the international news by detecting a cosmic ray with extremely high energy and giving it a name that appeals to journaliats

Cosmic rays are sub-atomic particles, usually protons, travelling at very high speed, close to the speed of light. The Japanese researchers have called their particle 'Amaterasu', after the Shinto goddess of the sun. It has an energy level (speed) that is second only to one detected in Utah in 1991. That one was humorously called the 'oh my god' particle, because its energy level was so far off the scale that no-one could explain its origin or cause (and this is still the case). Someone has, therefore dubbed the new discovery the 'oh my goddess' particle

No-one knows what these particles are, where they come from (there is no obvious source in the direction they have travelled from), or how they acquired such high energy (even an exploding star would not be powerful enough). Apparently the two most energetic particles ever detected don't even come from the same place, since they arrived from different directions. Somehow it is refreshing that, even now, something so completely inexplicable exists

In Shinto tradition, Amaterasu has a sibling (gender indeterminate), Tsukuyomi, the moon deity. In the mythology of Japan, they had a falling out and so the sun and moon never appear in the same part of the sky. Perhaps they also project cosmic rays