Cosmic rays hint at new physics just beyond the reach of the LHC

Cosmic ray shower. Artist�s impression.
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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) � the world�s presently most powerful particle accelerator � reaches a maximum collision energy of 14 TeV. But cosmic rays that collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere have been measured with collision energies about ten times as high.

The two types of observations complement each other. At the LHC, energies