A cosmic ray hits Utah with the energy of a thrown baseball

Over the Dugway Proving Ground desert, a piece of equipment called the Fly's Eye watched the night sky for faint streaks of ultraviolet light. On October 15, 1991, it caught one unlike anything researchers at the University of Utah had recorded. A single subatomic particle had struck the upper atmosphere carrying roughly 40 million times the energy of protons smashed together in the era's most powerful accelerators. Physicists nicknamed it, only half-jokingly, the Oh-My-God particle…