How Supernovas Act as Universe’s Largest Particle Accelerators

How Supernovas Act as Universe’s Largest Particle Accelerators

From PBS Space Time by PBS

April 29, 2026 · 19 min

About this episode

This episode discusses how supernovas function as the universe's largest particle accelerators and the origins of cosmic rays.

Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Cern's Large Hadron Collider routinely collides particles at energies equivalent to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. If this worries you, then the following fact will either put you at ease or scare the hell out of you. And that's that a particle with the energy of an LHC collision hits every square kilometer of the Earth every single second. And we only relatively recently figured out where these cosmic rays are coming from. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime Search the Entire Space Time Library Here: https://search.pbsspacetime.com/ Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt Caplan, Hayley West & Matt O'Dowd Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria Directed by Andrew Kornhaber Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber Executive…

People in this episode

Host: Matt O'Dowd

Topics covered

  • supernovas
  • particle accelerators
  • cosmic rays
  • universe
  • astrophysics

Keywords

  • supernova
  • particle accelerator
  • cosmic rays
  • Large Hadron Collider
  • astrophysics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: PBS, Kornhaber Brown, PBS Digital Studios, Cern

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