What are cosmic rays?

Cosmic rays are super-fast particles that come from space and hit Earth all the time.

Imagine you're playing outside on a windy day, and suddenly a tiny rock comes flying at you really fast, that's kind of like what happens with cosmic rays. Only instead of rocks, it's tiny bits like electrons or protons (which are even smaller than atoms), and they’re moving so fast, it’s like they're going lightning quick.

These tiny bits come from all over the universe, sometimes from our own Sun, or maybe from a faraway star explosion. They travel through space for years, maybe even thousands of years, before they finally reach Earth.

When they hit things in the sky, like air molecules, they make little showers of more particles that fall down toward us. It's like when you throw a rock into water and it makes ripples, cosmic rays make particle ripples all over the atmosphere!

Sometimes we can even feel them, like when you're on an airplane and your ears pop because of changes in pressure, or when you get a little zap from static electricity. That’s just a tiny version of what cosmic rays do every day!