This week, researchers looking into the atmosphere of our planet made an astonishing discovery.
After a strong cosmic beam from "deep space" was discovered in the US, astronomers are left scratching their heads.
They have discovered particles named "Amaterasu" in Utah's West Desert, but the cause remains unknown.
The lightning bolt, with an energy of 240 quintillion electron volts, is significantly more powerful than a typical lightning bolt, which has a typical energy of 300 million volts.
NASA warns that cosmic rays, charged particles that constantly rain down on Earth, pose a risk to astronauts, potentially causing structural damage to DNA upon exposure.
John Matthews - a physicist at the University of Utah - told the press this week: "The particles are so high energy, they shouldn't be affected by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields.
"You should be able to point to where they come from in the sky."
When a cosmic ray enters Earth's atmosphere, it collides with other particles, forming a shower of particles that fall to Earth.
Computer glitches can be caused by low-energy beams from the sun, while rare, high-energy ones are believed to originate from other galaxies and extra-galactic sources, or a "void" in the universe.
Co-author of research published in the journal Science, John Matthews explained: "If you hold out your hand, one [cosmic ray] goes through the palm of your hand every second, but those are low-energy things.
"When you get out to these high-energy [cosmic rays], it’s more like one per square kilometer per century. It’s never going through your hand."
Matthews, a member of the Telescope Array collaboration, noted that the ray's high exa-electron volts make it second only to the 'Oh-My-God' particle, detected in 1991 at 320 exa-electron volts.
"But in the case of the Oh-My-God particle and this new particle, you trace its trajectory to its source and there's nothing high energy enough to have produced it," Matthews explained.
"That's the mystery of this – what the heck is going on?"
Cosmic rays pose a complex problem in science and space, despite their detection for over a century, scientists still lack a comprehensive understanding of their propagation throughout the Universe.
Cosmic rays are particles, primarily atomic nuclei and sub-nuclear particles like protons and electrons, that stream through the Universe at close to light speed but have more power than expected.
Experts believe they are produced in energetic circumstances like supernovas and stellar collisions, or by less energetic sources like stars.
