When stars explode as supernovas, they produce shock waves in the plasma surrounding them. So powerful are these shock waves, they can act as particle accelerators that blast streams of particles, called cosmic rays, out into the universe at nearly the speed of light. Yet how exactly they do that has remained something of a mystery.
Click here for original story, Shock waves created in the lab mimic astrophysical particle accelerators powered by exploding stars
Source: Phys.org