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IT TRIGGERED A SUBATOMIC CASCADE — AND COULD HAVE AN AVALANCHE OF IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF PHYSICS.Crash Course Scientists have now confirmed that an unusually powerful particle of antimatter crashed down into Antarctica back in December 2016. The collision seems to have triggered a subatomic cascade effect called Glashow resonance, Live Science reports, which is a theoretical phenomenon that requires more energy to set off than even the most powerful particle accelerators can provide. Scientists didn’t expect to see tangible evidence of Glashow resonance, but now that they have it helps further confirm the Standard Model of subatomic physics....

On December 6, 2016, a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a shower of secondary particles. The interaction was captured by a massive telescope buried in the Antarctic glacier, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. IceCube had seen a Glashow resonance event, a phenomenon predicted by Nobel laureate physicist Sheldon Glashow in 1960. With this detection, scientists provided another confirmation of...