Superbubble harbors cosmic rays

Stellar nursery jump-starts rays’ journey to Earth

Some of the mysterious, high-energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth may hatch from a colossal, gassy superbubble carved into space by hyperactive young stars in the Cygnus X region of the sky.

“We can pin down that — at least in this region — there are cosmic ray sources,” says astronomer and astrophysicist Isabelle Grenier, who led the study reported in the Nov.