Starship Asterisk*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray wrote:
<<The first observation of a cosmic ray with an energy exceeding 10²⁰ electronvolts was made by John Linsley at the Volcanic Ranch experiment in New Mexico in 1962. Cosmic rays with even higher energies have since been observed. Among them was the Oh-My-God particle (a play on the nickname "God particle" for the Higgs boson) observed on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3 × 10²⁰ electronvolts (50 joules)—in other words, a subatomic particle with macroscopic kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball traveling at 96 km/h (60 mph).

It was most probably a proton with a speed very close to the speed of light. To a static observer, such a proton, traveling at 1 − (5×10⁻²⁴) times c, would travel only 47 nanometers (5×10⁻²⁴ light-years) less than a light-year in one year.

Since the first observation, by the University of Utah's Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector, at least fifteen similar events have been recorded, confirming the phenomenon. These very high energy cosmic rays are very rare; the energy of most cosmic rays is between 10⁷ eV and 10¹⁰ eV.>>

Westwind wrote:How can you explain the concept of "electron volts" to people (like myself) who have little or no scientific education, and who relate the idea of "voltage" to power lines and household electric current?