Cosmic rays are atom fragments that rain down on the Earth from outside of the solar

system. They blaze at the speed of light and have been blamed for electronics problems
in satellites and other machinery.

Discovered in 1912, many things about cosmic rays remain a mystery more than a
century later. One prime example is exactly where they are coming from. Most scientists
suspect their origins are related to supernovas (star explosions), but the challenge is
that for many years cosmic ray origins appeared uniform to observatories examining the
entire sky.

A large leap forward in cosmic ray science came in 2017, when the Pierre Auger
Observatory (which is spread over 3,000 square kilometers, or 1,160 square miles, in
western Argentina) studied the arrival trajectories of 30,000 cosmic particles. It concluded
that there is a difference in how frequently these cosmic rays arrive, depending on
where you look. While their origins are still nebulous, knowing where to look is the first
step in learning where they came from, the researchers said. The results were
published in Science.
Cosmic rays can even be used for applications outside of astronomy. In November
2017, a research team discovered a possible void in the Great Pyramid of Giza, which
was built around 2560 B.C., using cosmic rays. The researchers found this cavity using
muon tomography, which examines cosmic rays and their penetrations through solid
objects.
Source: https://www.space.com/32644-cosmic-rays.html