BLACK holes, among the strangest objects in the universe, have once again surprised astronomers. It turns out that they generate strange tidal forces that affect high-speed particles in an entirely different way to low-speed ones. The unanticipated effect means that black holes in our galaxy could be the source of rare high-energy cosmic ray particles that astronomers have spotted slamming into the Earth’s atmosphere with inexplicable violence.
Tidal forces are a result of the way gravity diminishes with increasing distance from an object. For example, two particles at different distances from a black hole should experience different forces, so one…
