rationalskepticism.org

This discovery was somewhat eerily anticipated by a series of theoretical papers, their references [52-59]. In https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0312197.pdf (their reference 52), it states: Therefore, NLSPs produced hundreds, even thousands of kilometers away are within range of the detector. This is to be contrasted with the fact that muons must be produced at distances not larger than tens of kilometers from the detector in order to be observed. (The acronym NLSP refers to the hypothesized BSM particle, superpartner of the tau lepton.) This was posted to the arxiv in 2003 (!).

Not to oversell myself: I got the link to [52] from one of the pop science articles, not from some expansive knowledge of this subject matter. But it really made me sit up and take note.