Origin of the highest energy cosmic rays

Introducing a simple Galactic wind model patterned after the solar wind we show that back-tracing the orbits of the highest energy cosmic events sugge sts that they may all come from the Virgo cluster, and so probably from the active radio galaxy M87. This confirms a long standing expectation. Those powerful radio galaxies that have their relativistic jets stuck in the inte rstellar medium of the host galaxy, such as 3C147, will then enable us to d erive limits on the production of any new kind of particle, expected in som e extensions of the standard model in particle physics. New data from HIRES will be crucial in testing the model proposed here.